Knicks fans, Isiah Thomas feels your desperation.

That’s the only optimistic conclusion that one can draw from yesterday’s trade that sent veteran swingman Penny Hardaway and 20-year-old small forward Trevor Ariza to Orlando in exchange for guard Steve Francis. The trade, rumored since last week, isn’t one designed to build a team for the future, but to bolster the win column right now. And since the Knicks are further from the final Eastern Conference playoff spot (10 games) than Bode Miller is to multiple gold medals, the only thing accomplished by winning is saving the jobs of the decision makers.

It’s hard to imagine that coach Larry Brown is under fire – though failing to establish a solid rotation half way through the season deserves some heat – after only one season, so it’s reasonable to conclude that Thomas is trying to save his own hide. After all, in two plus years at the helm, he’s taken a team that was almost .500 and turned it into a lottery fixture. Team Presidents who accomplish that usually wind up on the street.

“We just want ballplayers,” Brown said yesterday. “I don’t get caught up in positions. I think Steve is strong enough to guard 2s and quick enough to guard 1s.”

The air of desperation in this deal is particularly strong given the final terms versus the rumored terms. As my colleague John Hollinger wrote last week, there was a deal on the table that would have sent Francis to New York in exchange for Jamal Crawford, Hardaway, and either Ariza or rookies Nate Robinson or David Lee. This wouldn’t have been an ideal trade, either, but in Crawford, the Knicks would have rid themselves of a player owed $43 million until 2010-11.

Earlier this week, rumors had the trade involving forward Maurice Taylor, who is owed $9 million next year. Evidently, the Magic wanted cap relief in order to begin building a team around forward Dwight Howard and guard Jameer Nelson. The Orlando braintrust of co-general managers Otis Smith and Dave Twardzik continued to hold out for better terms, and Isiah finally coughed up his primary asset, Hardaway, a player whose career has been ruined by knee injuries, but whose contract expires in June.

That will give the Magic $15.8 million in cap flexibility. Hardaway has long been blamed for Magic coach Brian Hill’s firing in 1997, and it was clear yesterday why the team brought him back to Orlando, where he played from 1993-99.

“We will have a conversation with Penny Hardaway, but Penny Hardaway will never put on an Orlando Magic uniform,” Smith said yesterday.

Of course, Knicks fans would like to think that it’s their team that is rebuilding. The roster has nine, oops, eight guys who are 25 or younger. But this trade, combined with the recent deal for swingman Jalen Rose, suggests the Knicks are panicking and trying at all costs to stem the tide of their losing streak – 16 of their last 18 entering last night’s meeting with Miami. The Rose deal isn’t horrible because his contract expires next year. But Francis is owed $48.5 million through 2008-09. And that doesn’t even go into matters such as how will he fit with his new team.

In most ways, Francis is a middle-class man’s Stephon Marbury, a point guard who shots a bit too much for his team’s good. Given that Marbury is owed an even more onerous – i.e. less tradeable – $60 million until 2008-09, it’s likely that both men will squabble over playing time and touches.

Francis, a three-time All-Star, does have his positives. He’s averaged 19.3 points per game in his seven-year career, and he rebounds well for a point guard, averaging six per contest. On the downside, he’s 29, which for a perimeter player means it’s all downhill from here. Francis’s numbers this year – 16.2 ppg and 4.8 boards – are already down from his career averages. Given the amount of complaining he did in Houston about having to share the ball with Yao Ming and his refusal to enter a game in Orlando earlier this season, it’s hard to see him happily accepting some sort of quick-fix role off the bench in New York so Crawford and Robinson can continue to develop their games.

The most interesting aspect of this trade is that even in it’s modest goals, it’s likely to fail. The Knicks’ schedule for the next few weeks is murderous: Their next seven games are against playoff contenders and they won’t play consecutive games against lottery denizens – a chance for a winning streak – for a month.

The major upside to this trade is that it should finally reveal to the Dolans that Thomas has no plan. The Knicks are now consigned to being an expensive, luxury tax-paying mediocrity for the rest of the decade. Nets owner Bruce Ratner is probably trying to see if he can get his team into Brooklyn as soon as possible to capitalize on the hoops ennui that has gripped local fans who haven’t decamped for other teams and is set to continue into the next decade.

If Knicks fans can look back at this deal and see it as the beginning of the end for Thomas, then some good will come of it. But as a once-proud franchise tumbles toward their first 60-loss season, that will come as small compensation. With this trade, Thomas has ensured that he will leave a bigger mess behind than predecessor Scott Layden left for him. That’s a heck of legacy, and New York basketball fans deserve better.

mjohnson@nysun.com