So … anybody know what the plan is here?

In yet another perplexing move that brought in yet another bad contract, the Knicks agreed to trade power forward Antonio Davis to Toronto on Friday in return for swingman Jalen Rose and a first-round draft pick.

Talent-wise, the trade is tough to knock. The Knicks had a surplus of frontcourt players and a dearth of wings, so exchanging a big for a small is an obvious way to correct the massively imbalanced roster. Plus, Rose’s ball handling skills should enable him to play “point forward” and allow shoot-first guards like Jamal Crawford and Nate Robinson to play off the ball more. Look no further than yesterday’s loss to Houston, in which Rose had 11 assists and Crawford scored 24 points despite the absence of Stephon Marbury.

Additionally, the first-round pick – which was originally property of the Nuggets before it was sent to New Jersey in the Kenyon Martin sign-and-trade, then to Toronto in the Alonzo Mourning trade, and finally to the Knicks last week – gives the Knicks two in next year’s draft (the other is San Antonio’s). While this year’s senior class isn’t awash in high-level talent, scouts consider it a deep draft, so the Knicks’ picks – both of which should be 20th or later – could pay dividends.

That said, there are some larger questions at play here. Let’s start with Davis. The Knicks had two players with expiring contracts – Davis and Penny Hardaway. Both were for similar amounts, but Hardaway is useless to the Knicks and not even traveling with the team anymore. So why would the Knicks agree to include Davis instead? It’s not as if he was essential to the deal for the Raptors, who only did this trade for cap purposes, so one wonders if there were ulterior motives. Namely, that Larry Brown and Isiah Thomas are competing for the affections of the locker room, and that Davis was the player most firmly in Brown’s camp.

Second, there’s the contract issue. Understandably, the Knicks are in a better position than any other NBA team to accept large contracts, because they earn so much in ticket revenue from their extravagantly priced courtside seats. But this still seems excessive. Rose will make $17 million next year, while Davis’s contract expires. Double that amount to account for the luxury tax, then subtract the $3 million Toronto kicked in to bribe New York to take Rose, and the Knicks effectively paid $31 million in order to get a year’s worth of the now mediocre-at-best Rose and a first-round draft pick.

Far be it from me to tell James Dolan how to run his business – if he wants to pay $31 million for a draft pick, it’s not hurting the fans any. Still, you have to question the sanity of any organization that makes such a reckless move, especially when it comes on the heels of about 20 other moves that were just as reckless.

However, a few Knicks fans have pointed out optimistically that the team can keep doing this ad infinitum to get extra draft choices every year. In other words, next year it would swap Rose’s expiring contract for another contract of similar size but with an additional year, extracting a first-round pick as its price. Then that player would be dealt a year later in a similar deal, and so on down the line. It’s hardly the ideal way to run a team, but I suppose it’s a creative way to rebuild through the draft when you’re capped out for the next half-decade.

Unfortunately, this trade also raises the sickening possibility that Isiah may have more deals left up his sleeve. He still has Hardaway’s expiring contract on his hands and is rumored to be talking with the Trail Blazers about a swap that could bring in Brown favorite Theo Ratliff, Isiah favorite Darius Miles, or energetic swingman Ruben Patterson. Isiah has already traded all the firstrounders he can, so we suspect the only harm he can do in that deal is to Dolan’s wallet (forget about getting under the cap – the Knicks have).Of course, Zeke has surprised us before, and not in a good way.

Another more remote possibility is a trade of the draft picks in the off-season. Reportedly, Isiah thinks the Rose deal gives him the pieces to nab Atlanta’s Al Harrington in a sign-and-trade. Atlanta is indeed open to such a transaction, but using Rose or Maurice Taylor and two late first-round picks as the bait will be less tempting than Bea Arthur in a thong leotard. The Hawks already have more than enough young players, so the last thing they want is three more firstrounders this June (two from New York and their own). That’s why the Hawks’ price for Harrington is one solid starter – preferably a point guard or a center – and a first-rounder. Two draft picks and a washed-up, overpaid veteran falls well short of the mark.

Incidentally, not enough has been made about what a brilliant deal this is for Toronto. Stand-in general manager Wayne Embry, filling in for the recently axed Rob Babcock, paid a minimal price to gain a huge chunk of salary cap space for his team. It’s been reported that the Raptors can be $10 million under the cap this summer, but by my calculations that number could be substantially larger if the Raptors can get cap relief for guard Alvin Williams (whose career may be over after a series of knee injuries) and trade disgruntled vet Eric Williams before the February 23 deadline. Either way, the Raptors should be a big player in free agency. With Toronto’s large Serbian community and the Raps’ glaring need at small forward, they could be poised to make a run at Peja Stojakovic.

The Raptors also could extract more value from the deal if they can find a way to pawn Davis off on a contender in return for an expiring contract and a draft pick, but that seems unlikely – a deal for Dallas’s Keith Van Horn is the only plausible, cap-abiding swap I can come up with that doesn’t involve a third party, and Van Horn has been going gangbusters lately.

So while Toronto’s rebuilding effort gains steam – anybody notice who just passed the Knicks in the standings? – New York languishes. While the acquisition of Rose could help matters slightly in the short term (break out the party hats – the Knicks only lost by four yesterday!), in the big picture it raises more questions than it answers. All you really need to know is that once again, the Knicks traded an overpaid player for one who is even more overpaid, and that this vicious circle shows no sign of abating.

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