Dicembre 2013, Woodson mangerà il panettone?

che storia è dello sguattero?

Why can't teams in New York just rebuild, like everyone else has to?

If they were, say, the Charlotte Knicks, with a record this morning of 9-21, having lost back to back games to, um, Toronto, with no real hopes of being competitive this season and facing the prospect that their star player might walk after this season, wouldn't the choice be obvious? The Charlotte Knicks would start dealing their available assets and take a long, hard look at whether they'd move Carmelo Anthony before the trade deadline. And no one would fault them for it.

If they were, say, the San Antonio Nets, with a coach that looks perilously close to being in over his head, a team that simply hasn't clicked and key players already out for the season and/or on the shelf, wouldn't the path be clear? The San Antonio Nets would "reassign" their coach, make the best deals they could for whatever teams wanted their marquee names and look forward. And no one would say anything about it.

But the New York Knicks -- and, to a lesser extent, the Brooklyn Nets -- apparently do not have that option. You know the conventional wisdom, certainly. You can't rebuild in New York. The fans, both those who pay thousands for courtside seats at the Garden, and those who watch on TV, won't allow it. The media won't allow it. The Garden -- and, now, Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov -- won't allow it.

Which seems silly.

Why on earth can't the Knicks be bad for a year? Maybe two? Especially in a year when there is so much potential reward in this year's Draft?

With the perception growing that Anthony is going to walk -- somewhere -- at season's end, when he becomes a free agent, why shouldn't New York control its most marketable asset? Why shouldn't they do like the Nuggets, who controlled how, when and for how much they'd trade Anthony when they sent him to New York in 2011 for players and picks that rebuilt the Nuggets in less than a year? Why not move Anthony now for as much as you can get -- including, presumably, a 2014 first-rounder that New York currently lacks -- hunker down for three and a half months, take your lumps, but be in a position to potentially get a difference-maker in the Draft?

After all, isn't that how the Knicks' last era of sustained excellence began -- with Dave DeBusschere pumping his fists after New York won the 1985 lottery, and the Knicks taking Patrick Ewing?

"The question is the value of the perception," said a longtime team executive who's worked in New York (I'm not saying for whom), and, like almost everyone else, asked not to be named.

"If you're selling a seat at three grand," the executive said, "your perception is that it's hard to have a [bleep] team, that people aren't going to watch. They may hold onto the ticket but they're not going to watch. So the question is what is the perception of a half-empty Garden? ... but there comes a point where you've patched the quilt so many times, it's just a series of patches. The question is, have they reached that point?"

Money is obviously a consideration. New York is estimated to gross more than $2 million per game at Madison Square Garden; if those fans start showing up as empty seats, that could cut deep into the bottom line. A company that just spent $1 billion renovating the Garden needs to get a return on that investment.

"Essentially, what it comes down to, if you're a paying customer, you're paying a premium price to see a product that has to be good," said a former team executive. "Therefore, you tend to do things to try to keep it where it is. You never say in New York that this is not working, we're going to get us a four or five year plan. Donnie Walsh got rid of some bad contracts, and I give him credit for that. But they wound up taking [Amar'e] Stoudemire, when everybody knew Stoudemire was a two, three-year player at best because of his knee. He saved them that first year. What they did for that one period of time, for whatever reason, they kept getting contracts, like the kid from Houston, Stevie Francis, and it put them in an awful position."

Indeed, the Knicks have gone through recent periods of rebuilding. The problem is, owner James Dolan and the executives at Madison Square Garden, the team's parent company, never seem to stick with the plan, or the architect of the plan, for very long.

They hired Isiah Thomas, who was president and general manager from 2003-06. But then they brought in Walsh, who took over for Thomas as president in 2008 and fired Thomas as coach after Thomas had been ordered to coach the team by Dolan, with whom he was, and is, a close friend.

Thomas, now a colleague of mine at NBA TV, had a lot of personnel misses in New York when he was in charge -- a $30 million contract for free agent center Jerome James, and a relationship with Stephon Marbury, his first major acquisition, in 2003, that turned toxic. And hiring Larry Brown, which seemed like a masterstroke in 2005, was a full-blown disaster by 2006.

But by the time Thomas left, the Knicks also had several young players on their roster that are still playing in the NBA: Zach Randolph, Trevor Ariza, Nate Robinson, David Lee, Channing Frye, Matt Barnes and Jamal Crawford. A pretty impressive list. That group didn't win in New York; young teams almost never do. But they weren't together long enough to see what they could become.

Walsh had another plan -- clear as much cap room as possible for the summer of 2010, when the biggest collection of impact free agents in history, starting with LeBron James, would be available. Walsh wanted to bring in two impact players, not one. (Depending on who you talk with, the Knicks believed, with varying degrees of certainty, that they'd get James.) So out went the young players Thomas had amassed, along with the big-money contracts he'd given out.

Walsh stuck with the plan over two years, during which the Knicks continued to lose, under new coach Mike D'Antoni. But when free agency arrived in 2010, New York couldn't land LeBron, who went to Miami, and they couldn't get Joe Johnson, Chris Bosh or Carlos Boozer, either. The Knicks did land Stoudemire, for $100 million, gambling that his knees would hold out.

They did not. Stoudemire was great -- for one season.

Walsh and Dolan parted ways after three years, and the Knicks hired Glen Grunwald, who signed free agent Tyson Chandler, took a flier on Jeremy Lin, who exploded on his (and D'Antoni's) watch. Grunwald's team won 54 games last season and was one of the league's best stories, as New York won a playoff series for the first time in a decade.

So, of course, they fired Grunwald, replacing him with former MSG executive Steve Mills -- who had hired Thomas.

These are all smart people. Thomas was excoriated for the Knicks' record, but he's proven to be an astute judge of young talent, having drafted the likes of Tracy McGrady and 1996 Rookie of the Year Damon Stoudamire in Toronto and future All-Star Lee in New York. He also developed a young Jermaine O'Neal in Indiana and assembled those young players in New York.

Walsh is as respected a GM as there is. He built teams that contended in Indiana around Hall of Famer Reggie Miller, whom Walsh drafted in 1986 over the objections of just about everyone in town. And upon his return to Indy two years ago, he helped polish another Pacers team -- built primarily by Larry Bird -- that is now a contender.

But in the cauldron of New York, everything is ratcheted up.

"The solution for every problem, whether it's in team-building or in the corporate world, is a coherent long-term strategy," said another longtime sports executive. "And the requisite follow through. Sure, you have to be nimble and flexible enough to make midcourse corrections when necessary. But if you did a good job plotting your course you can't keep changing plans every year or two."

How much the MSG people influence Dolan's decisions always is debated. Many who have worked there say the suits' impact is overblown, though their presence in basketball meetings and their willingness to offer opinions -- sometimes strongly -- is not. They were there when the Knicks tried to woo James, and when they worked out the details of the Anthony trade.

"The people in the Garden aren't basketball people," said yet another veteran executive. "They think they're basketball people. They're New Yorkers, so they watch a lot of basketball, but that's a far [bleeping] cry from working in it."

That view doesn't lead the Garden's decision making, those who've worked there say, but it changes their perspective. They share that sense that New York, being New York, must have the greatest players and field a championship team -- a worldview that is not limited to the Knicks, by the way. (A fellow named Steinbrenner seemed to share that belief.) That naturally creates impatience -- and, not a little arrogance.

"The most immodest moniker I've ever heard was, 'Madison Square Garden -- the World's Most Famous Arena,' " the longtime team executive said. "Well, who says? They do!"

The New York media is also a major player in driving perception -- and, by extension, reality. Some of them are good people just doing their jobs like anyone else. But there are some people with agendas, and 8 million people can be influenced by those agendas.

Everything is a big deal there. Everything is a controversy. Everyone is a potential free agent. Chris Paul wants to play in New York! Tony Parker wants to play in New York! Kobe Bryant wants to play in New York! So, after none of them come, the story becomes, "Why didn't you get Paul?"

Dolan, unintelligently, plays into this hand by being almost uncommunicative with the media, and by instituting a policy where MSG employees shadow players and coaches who speak with reporters. It creates nothing but mistrust on all sides. Walsh ended the policy when he was in charge.

The Nets are relatively new to New York, of course, but they've followed the old playbook. Prokhorov has made it clear that he's not interested in going slow, or building through the Draft. He wants to win, and win now. If former coaches Avery Johnson and P.J. Carlesimo couldn't do it, maybe Jason Kidd could. If giving Deron Williams $100 million wasn't enough, bring in Paul Pierce, Jason Terry and Kevin Garnett.

The trouble is, no one else is doing it that way anymore. The Nets are a 2004 team in a 2013 world. Teams like Dallas and Portland, which were always a depository for bad contracts, no longer play that game. With the repeater tax and other goodies in the new CBA, no one plays that game anymore. You have to have at least one or two players making major contributions to your team these days that are on their rookie contracts -- in essence, being underpaid for what they produce.

The Nets will find it extremely hard to extricate themselves from their current contract commitments, though Brooklyn's always maintained this group might only be together two years, anyway, with the possibility of cap freedom possible as soon as 2015, when the contracts of Garnett, Terry and Andrei Kirilenko come off the payroll.

But, that's in two years.

"They're in a trick bag at the wrong time," the former team executive said. "They're just in a tough spot."

Current speculation on the secret power behind the throne centers on Creative Artists Agency. That talent rep behemoth just happens to represent almost everyone who currently is in a position of authority in the Knicks' organization, from Anthony and J.R. Smith to coach Mike Woodson to assistant general manager Allan Houston and player personnel director Mark Warkentien.

CAA also uses power broker Wes Wesley, who now represents elite coaches like the Bulls' Tom Thibodeau and Kentucky's John Calipari, as a consultant. One theory posits that Calipari, at CAA's behest, will ultimately replace Woodson on the bench.

Thomas remains friends with Dolan, and may well have been brought back in a decision-influencing capacity a couple of years ago. But Commissioner David Stern said that Thomas -- at the time, the coach at Florida International -- couldn't hold both jobs simultaneously. Of late, Dolan has said that he won't ever bring Thomas back because he doesn't think he'll get a "fair shake" from the media.

"I don't think there's an owner who wants to win more than James Dolan," Thomas said Saturday. "He commits the resources. He does everything he can for the players. He just spent $1 billion on the arena for the fans. I think he'll do whatever it takes to win."

Dolan could display that desire by letting Mills do what needs to be done: get the best he can for Anthony and Felton -- as long as there are 2014 picks involved -- and ride out the storm. There are a few primo 6-foot-9, 6-foot-10, ballhandling lifeboats at the end of the rainbow, in which a team could luxuriate for a few years.