The wait was excruciating for Maciej Lampe, who was seated on the floor of the Theater at Madison Square Garden last night along with the rest of the projected lottery picks in the NBA draft.

He watched the early picks go up on the board as expected and walk to the podium wearing the hat of their new teams, then continued to sit with a stunned look on his face as players seated with friends in the crowd came down from the stands like contestants on "The Price is Right."

As it turned out, the price of Lampe's $1.8-million buyout with Real Madrid and the uncertainty about how long an NBA team would have to wait for his services put off every team in the first round.

Finally, the Knicks set Lampe free from his chair by naming him with the first pick of the second round.

"Everybody thought I was going to go high; myself, too," Lampe said. "It was kind of surprising. I thank New York for the opportunity. I'm going to try to prove people wrong."

There was no mistaking Lampe's shock and disappointment. When someone asked him for a quote in his native Polish, Lampe, who speaks five languages fluently - English, Polish, Swedish, Spanish and Croatian - drew a blank. He sat trying to formulate an answer, then shook his head and said, "The words are gone from my head."

Lampe went on to explain that FIBA, basketball's international governing body, had told him he was free to go to the NBA but that his Spanish team informed NBA teams of the buyout within the past week. With his 7-foot, 240-pound body, Lampe can play effectively at power forward, but he also has the three-point shooting skills to play small forward in the style of Dallas star Dirk Nowitzki if he develops as expected in the next two or three years.