If there are any glass-half-full people left among the Knickerbocker faithful, then please consider the following: As the team starts the second part of the season tonight in Washington, their record stands at 15–37. The team doesn’t figure to be particularly active at the trading deadline, because they have no significant contracts that expire after this season, and the other Knicks have bloated contracts. In addition, those players are either injury prone or have big holes in their games.

The Eddy Curry–Zach Randolph frontline — upon which much Knicks optimism rode — has been an abysmal failure. The team plays better when only one of them is on the floor, and it sometimes plays better with both of them on the bench. This marks a rare feat: The Knicks added Randolph, who averages a double-double, 17.3 points and 10.3 rebounds per game, to their lineup without giving up any key contributors. Yet their offense is worse for the change. Last season, the Knicks were 16th in the league in Offensive Efficiency (points per 100 possessions) at 105.7; this season, they rank 21st at 103.9.

For most Knicks fans, the good news is that pitchers and catchers have reported. Baseball cannot be far away.

What the Knicks should do — and what they probably will do — during the final two months of the regular season can teach one a lot about this team. Here’s my list of priorities:

Wilson Chandler needs to play. Isiah Thomas’s handling of his no. 1 draft pick has been nothing short of reprehensible. Chandler had seen action in only eight games all season (despite the Knicks having no shortage of garbage time during many of their blowout losses) — and then was inserted early this month into the starting lineup against the NBA champions San Antonio Spurs, and got into early foul trouble. He played five minutes the next game in Milwaukee, and has taken his warm-ups off during only one game since.

If this is Thomas’s idea of player development, he could be fired for that alone. Chandler, by most accounts, is an active player. He has 13 rebounds, three steals, a blocked shot, and 25 points in 66 very scattered minutes of action. At present, the Knicks are starting Quentin Richardson, an injury-prone guard with a very streaky shot, at small forward. It’s time to see if the team’s top rookie could be the future answer at that position. I’m not saying start him. I say, start Renaldo Balkman, the 2006 first-round pick and best Knicks defender, and bring Chandler off the bench for a consistent 15–20 minutes per night.

Randolph Morris needs to play. When the Knicks signed Morris right after the NCAA tournament last season, exploiting a loophole in the Collective Bargaining Agreement, it seemed like a rare bit of savvy by the Thomas administration. But Thomas has screwed it up again by failing to trust his scouting instincts. Morris has been nailed to the bench, receiving only one measly minute of action since before Thanksgiving. By contrast, Jerome James, who stands no chance of being part of a productive Knicks future, has played five minutes.

Morris is 6-feet-11-inches and 260 pounds, and his collegiate stats suggest that he’s a good rebounder and can block a few shots. The Knicks need to find out if this is true; and if it isn’t, then while he still has cachet, they need to move him for a second-round draft pick or two. Morris’s contract expires at the end of the season, and the team risks gaining nothing from the signing.

It’s time to cut bait on Mardy Collins. If you can’t shoot, then to be a useful NBA player, you need a multitude of other skills. Collins can’t shoot (24.6% from the field, and he has yet to make a triple), and his other skills aren’t strong enough to offset this. He can’t run the point, and he isn’t enough of a shut down defender. The Knicks need a fourth guard, and it’s time to start perusing the D-League lists.

Overall, I think it’s imperative that the Knicks turn their focus to the future and start seeing which players among their recent additions fit into a long-term plan. But that isn’t what I think the Knicks will do. Instead, I think they will continue doing what they have been doing — which is playing to win now. It may not be evident that the Knicks are in a win-now mode, since they haven’t been winning much, but it’s the only way to characterize a game plan that ignores rookies, casts player development to the wind, and uses the best offensive player, Jamal Crawford, for almost 45 minutes a night.

With the exception of one week in early March, the Knicks’ remaining schedule is full of Eastern Conference mediocrities. I suspect that Thomas will push to get some momentum and give the illusion of progress as an attempt to salvage one more season at the helm.

That’s why we’ve reached that point in the season where it’s probably good for Knicks fans to root for their team to lose. More losses not only improve their chances at the draft lottery, but are their only hope of forcing some sort of regime change at Madison Square Garden.

mjohnson@nysun.com