NEW YORK -- Since I've been unwilling to tear myself away long enough from the mesmeric NBA playoffs to attend Larry Brown's regularly scheduled, roadside rendezvous (putting Franklin Roosevelt's Fireside Chats to shame) with the gang of Knicks' roving reporters, I would like to take this occasion to sing him a couple choruses.

Here is a man who has earned countless millions of dollars while coaching countless millions of teams over the past three decades . . . a man who has high-tailed it out of millions of towns and left teams in the lurch . . . a man who has sent out resumes proposing his next payday on his employer-for-that-moment's stationery . . . a man who has brokered buyouts or bye-bye outs en route to fancying another place to call paradise and then goodbye.

Larry Brown has directed, produced and starred in all of this and more. Yet here he is crying on the hard shoulder on a daily basis and portraying himself as a victim.

And getting away with it!

I guess the gang of roving reporters is so relieved the Greenburg, N.Y., police haven't made any arrests and pleased as punch the Knicks' outgoing coach is granting drive-by interviews, he's allowed to represent any way he wants.

"I feel like a dead man walking," Brown whimpered the other day down the road a piece from the "rim of silence" at the Knicks' practice facility.

Between that training complex and headquarters at 2 Penn Plaza, in the wake of team owner James Dolan and top executive Steve Mills putting Isiah Thomas in charge of the Knicks' asylum, already there are enough casualties piled up for several seasons' worth of episodes.

It's being banished to limbo that's bugging out Brown more than anything.

Not knowing when this farce is going to end. Not knowing when he's going to be notified his once-saintly services are no longer wanted.

Because not a single superior has told him (or agent Joe Glass despite the habitual liar's claim) not to believe what he's read in the papers regarding his inescapable eviction, he knows his days are numbered.

There's that, of course. But it's also making Brown crazier than usual that he isn't being loved unconditionally by his bosses.

He's never handled the most minor rejection from players and the media all that well, and this conspiratorial cold shoulder by the organization's hierarchy far outdistances any of that.

Brown's feelings are irreparably hurt, and Thomas is thoroughly treasuring watching him contort in his fate.

Does Thomas deserve to be fired for creating a capsized, 23-win monstrosity and a polluted atmosphere throughout the Garden where paranoia and job insecurity run amuck?

As Shaq would say, "Don't even ask such a dumb question!"

But Brown deserves worse punishment, hence the mental anguish and humiliation he's being subjected to before the guillotine drops.

That's what you get for demonstrating abject disloyalty to the person responsible for furnishing you with your "dream job" and establishing you as the highest paid coach ($55 million for five years) in NBA history.

From almost the split second training camp opened in Charleston, S.C., last year, Brown complained about the roster Thomas had provided.

Almost the first words out of his mouth once the season began were pot shots taken at Stephon Marbury. And Thomas' favorite poisonous pet was only the first of many to be flogged publicly.

It's not as if Brown was clueless about the roster he had inherited.

It's not as if he thought the players remotely resembled the championship caliber ones he guided to the NBA Finals two straight seasons.

It's not as if he could fake surprise when his Knicks didn't perform like the regal role players he assembled in Philly to surround Allen Iverson.

The more Brown sounded off, the more misfits Thomas added to his puzzling puzzle.

In four decades of scrutiny, I've found Brown can be remarkably loyal and disloyal.

Over these many years, I've found him to be neurotically generous and disingenuous. In most cases, I'm convinced he can't help himself from acting one way or the other.

Only this time, before the Knicks pay him X amount to vanish, he's going to pay big time, too, for throwing Thomas on the third rail.