John Calipari the next coach of the New York Knicks?

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If they don't, anyone can see what's coming: Mike Woodson gets fired, company man Herb Williams becomes the interim coach and the drumbeat begins in the background for John Calipari to make his long-awaited return to the NBA.

You don't have to be an NBA executive to see that coming, but I asked some, and they see it, too. The payroll is maxed out through next season, the tools for tax teams to acquire players in sign-and-trades next summer are gone and it's not like the Knicks can sell anyone on a fallback plan of reloading with a lottery pick in the coveted 2014 draft. The Knicks' pick goes to Denver (from the Anthony trade) or to Orlando (if it's worse than the Nuggets' pick).

"Where's the excitement?" one rival executive said this week. "They have no pick, and the excitement isn't coming from winning."

You can only sell success or hope in the NBA, and if the Knicks don't find a path to winning soon, they'll have neither when it comes time to convince Anthony to re-sign as a free agent next summer. But hope -- or the illusion of it -- can be manufactured. This is especially true when the next move on the chessboard could have been predicted when the Knicks sacrificed all their pieces for Anthony.

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But the Knicks are all-in with CAA in ways that few of their rivals could even imagine. Days before training camp began, GM Glen Grunwald was pushed aside in favor of Steve Mills, who was brought back for a second tour of duty due to his institutional knowledge of the Garden and connections to the game's power brokers -- especially, William "World Wide Wes" Wesley, whose path to Garden influence was paved with the Anthony trade.

CAA, via Wesley, also represents a certain decorated college coach in Lexington, Ky. Given the path they've chosen, the Knicks can't get any of the NBA-ready players on Kentucky's roster, but they can get the coach -- and are perhaps the only team positioned to pay Calipari what it would take. One league executive surmised that the bidding would start at $8 million a year.

"That's what Wes will be pushing," one of the executives said. "That's what CAA will be pushing."

Executives differ on whether Calipari would want full personnel control in addition to the coaching title. "He wants full control, bottom line," one executive said. I agree with another exec who pointed out that, when it comes to the Knicks, it is understood that CAA has the power and that it would merely be channeled through Calipari. Either way, Calipari would instantly become the most powerful authority figure the Knicks have had since Isiah Thomas finally was run out of town. Somehow, that sounds just about right.

Never mind that Calipari's last NBA coaching job, in New Jersey, was a debacle that swept him away in a toxic wave of paranoia. This only makes him the ideal candidate to work for the Knicks.

The name of the game is to keep Melo happy, and in theory, it shouldn't take much. Anthony has the stage he wanted, the market he wanted, the complete run of what they still call the World's Most Famous Arena for reasons that have little to do with basketball. What more could he want?

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