Knicks president Donnie Walsh is looking pretty wise these days amid LeBron James mania.
Walsh had taken some heat for his salary-cap-clearing plan, when the Knicks looked to be LeBron longshots. No longer.
Echoing coach Mike D’Antoni’s optimism in Sunday’s Post, Walsh said he is excited about where the Knicks stand — $34 million under the cap with 44 days left until July 1 free agency.
“I came here two years ago and laid out the idea the best way to rebuild the team was to bring the cap down,” Walsh told The Post.
“We have done that. Now I feel we’re at that point, and that’s exciting to me. It doesn’t dictate what direction we will take. But it opens up a lot of options for us to start rebuilding the team.
“It doesn’t mean we’ll do it the way people think, but we’ll have a lot of options.”
And the No. 1 option — pairing James with a star sidekick such as Chris Bosh or Amare’ Stoudemire — does not appear farfetched at all.
Perhaps Walsh saw flaws in the Cavaliers’ roster that ultimately would lead them to this moment — chaos.
Cleveland’s second-round ouster by Boston has swung open the door for James, who believes in karma, to bolt to Broadway.
And despite not having played a game in a month, the Knicks are the talk of the city, even the sporting nation.
“It’s good that our fans are showing their enthusiasm,” Walsh said. “We cleared a lot of room, and a lot of people around the country are curious to see how things will turn out.
“It creates interest, and we’ve got to make something out of it. I look at this position of where we’re in now as the beginning of the rebuilding of the team.”
Walsh is thrilled to have D’Antoni, a U.S. Olympic coach, on his side to recruit.
James, Bosh and the other big free agent, Dwayne Wade, all played under D’Antoni on the gold-medal-winning Olympic Team.
“Mike has been a very good coach, and players know that,” Walsh said.
“He does have an appealing style. He’s a big plus. The first two years he’s been here, we couldn’t put together a team that had all the elements, and it made it hard for him to show what kind of coach he is.”
The Cavs’ defeat was not a shock to Walsh.
“At that level, you have teams that are very close, and one bad game puts you in a definite hole,” he said.
“I’m never surprised when you get down to the final four teams [in the East]. Any NBA team can beat another at that point.”
And now you cannot second-guess Walsh. Even if James chooses Chicago or remains in Cleveland, it will be a close call, and the Knicks will not go down without a fight.
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D’Antoni said the next several weeks entering July 1 “will be crazy” because of every little LeBron rumor.
One TV report this weekend said James recently called the Bulls’ Derrick Rose to talk about the possibility of playing in Chicago. If true, that qualifies as tampering by Rose.