In the same way that people can’t help but stop and look when they see a wreck on the side of the highway, nobody can avert their eyes from the mess that is the New York Knicks. Usually, a team that goes 17-45 in its first 62 games finds its way to the nether regions of the local sports pages. But if anything, the Knicks have become a bigger story with each soul-draining loss.

There’s a reason for this: The Knicks aren’t just a bad team, but an extremely expensive bad team. Never in the history of sports has so much been spent to achieve so little. New York, despite the highest payroll in the history of the league, currently sports the worst record in the NBA. It’s not just a few cents higher, either – the Knicks’ payroll is double that of 20 of the league’s 29 other teams. It’s nearly quadruple that of Charlotte, the team New York is trying to surpass to avoid finishing with the league’s worst record.

Adding insult to injury, general manager Isiah Thomas foolishly gave away next year’s first-round draft pick. So confident was he of New York’s success this year that he failed to include lottery protection on the draft pick as a term of the Eddy Curry trade with Chicago.

Truly, then, this is a team for the ages. While memories of most seasons fade as the years pass, fans will recall this epic disaster of a season with laser-like clarity decades from now.

So what I’m about to say might surprise you: This team isn’t as bad as it looks. Sure, that’s easy to say when the Knicks are so unbelievably, jaw-droppingly bad, but hear me out. There’s still a fair amount of talent on the roster, and there’s still a Hall of Fame coach on the sidelines.

Unfortunately, the Knicks have become too caught up in their own soap opera to mount any kind of charge, save for a six-game winning streak in January that was fueled as much by good fortune as good basketball. But looking ahead to next season, there’s actually some reason for optimism despite all the problems. In that spirit, let’s take a glass-half-full look at the state of the team:

THEY HAVE BIG GUYS WHO CAN PLAY

If Larry Brown would stop screwing around with his rotation long enough to shove the dead wood aside, he’d realize he has one of the best young frontcourts in basketball. Rookie power forward Channing Frye is a scoring machine on the rare occasions Brown keeps him on the floor for more than five minutes, and athletic hustler David Lee is a perfect complement off the bench.

At center, Curry obviously has loads of potential offensively. Based on that alone he’s a formidable weapon, even if he’s never going to be a good rebounder or defender. But because the Knicks have wasted so many minutes on guys like Jerome James and Maurice Taylor, the fact that they have a pretty good backup in Jackie Butler has been obscured. The unheralded CBA refugee is averaging 15.8 points and 9.5 rebounds per 40 minutes, and since he’s the youngest of the frontcourt quartet at age 21, he should make further strides in coming seasons. Of course, he’s a free agent after the season, and who knows if Isiah has paid enough attention to bother re-signing him.

QUENTIN RICHARDSON ISN’T THIS BAD

Between back problems in the first half of the season and a mangled shooting hand that has thrown his shot off track lately, we’ve only seen the real Richardson for a few games this year. This has been an under-reported factor in the Knicks’ demise.

When on his game, Q is one of the few Knicks who takes an interest in defense, and his ability to stretch opposing defenses with the 3-pointer is important on a shooting-deprived team. Moreover, Q’s ongoing struggles exposed the one area where the Knicks lacked depth – small forward – making it a glaring weakness until the Jalen Rose trade. Next year, the Knicks should have a much better version of Richardson manning the small forward spot.

THEY SHOULD BE ABLE TO SCORE

For all of Larry Brown’s kvetching about his point guards and playing “the right way,” you’d think the Knicks were a terrible offensive team. But their biggest weakness is at the defensive end. The Knicks aren’t good offensively, mind you (they rank 24th in the league in Offensive Efficiency, my measure of a team’s points scored per 100 possessions),but if you look at all the minutes they’ve invested in terrible offensive players, that’s something of an accomplishment.

The hobbled Richardson, the since departed Antonio Davis, Taylor, James, Malik Rose, and Nate Robinson have all been dreadful offensive performers, and they’ve played more than a quarter of New York’s minutes. Replacing those players with Steve Francis, Jalen Rose, and the Fab Four frontcourt I mentioned above should make the Knicks a respectable offensive team, even if Stephon Marbury doesn’t come out of his funk. So if the defense is just as lackluster next season – and no Larry Brown team has defended so lethargically – New York will be better just by virtue of an offensive improvement.

THEY’RE STILL SPENDING

Rather than pull the plug on this horrific experiment like any sane person, Isiah Thomas will keep throwing money at it. That could pay dividends if he ever makes a good trade, and considering how many he’s made, that should happen once in a while just by accident. Even if Thomas keeps screwing up, the roster should see an influx of talent. The Knicks will use their full midlevel exception again, try to trade the expiring contracts of Taylor and Jalen Rose, and probably see if they can deal Starbury, too. The risk is that Thomas will create roster space for the next wave by cutting loose an emerging talent like Butler or Qyntel Woods.

Sum up all the points above and throw in the possibility of the real Larry Brown showing up next year and replacing the impostor on the Knicks’ bench, and there’s a real possibility that the Knicks could nearly double their win total next season.

Let’s hope so, because while the Knicks are staying on the front page at the moment, it’s only a matter of time before they drift into irrelevance. After all, even in the most spectacular crashes, people eventually stop gawking at the wreckage.

Mr. Hollinger is the author of the 2005-06 Pro Basketball Forecast. He can be reached at jhollinger@nysun.com.