“I think this is going to be our team,” Hornacek said, peering ahead to the second chapter of the season. “We have had good stretches, bad stretches; we are trying to build something here before we go into the break, so I anticipate we have the same team.”

Hornacek’s sense of the current situation is based, in part, on his gut feeling that a lot of trade chatter does not lead anywhere. With that in mind, then, he will focus on getting the current Knicks roster to up its game.

And the Knicks, as rocky as their season has been, do remain within distance of the playoffs. At 23-33, they are only three games behind the Pistons for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. But a win over the Spurs was hardly enough to settle the waters. The Knicks’ defense remains an issue, although it was good against the Spurs, and Hornacek has also had to make sure his players actually give maximum effort.

Hornacek has also been fiddling with playing time. Willy Hernangomez, the rookie center, has been a beneficiary and become a mainstay in the rotation. In 14 games over the last month, he has nearly averaged a double-double, with 10.1 points per game and 9.7 rebounds in just 21.1 minutes a night.

Meanwhile, whatever the Knicks do on the court has been overshadowed of late by the controversies that have erupted around them. There is the ongoing tension between Anthony and the team’s president, Phil Jackson. There is drama, still not fully resolved, surrounding the former Knicks standout Charles Oakley and the team’s owner, James L. Dolan, stemming from an altercation last Wednesday that led to Oakley’s being led from Madison Square Garden in handcuffs.