Madison Square Garden--The entire Knicks' roster has been diagnosed with major depression, a team source disclosed, after a prominent psychiatrist evaluated the squad for its alarming and chronic lack of passion and gross underachievement.

"The whole team's depressed," psychiatrist Norman Schoenfeld, MD, wrote in a confidential report to the organization's owner, James Dolan III. "Every single player exhibits individual symptoms of major depression; the sole exception is the rookie Nate Robinson, whom I judge presently to be in the manic phase of a bipolar illness."

Schoenfeld indicated that head coach Larry Brown is "one of the most depressed individuals I've ever encountered in my life. Sitting with him I could feel my energy drain; the urge to sleep was overwhelming."

Coach Brown's voice, he said, "is so monotonic it could be bottled as a general anesthetic. This is why you see players yawning during time-outs."

Schoenfeld called Brown's depression and personality "infectious and malignant."

"He is the reason everyone around him is so phlegmatic and uninspired," he concluded.

He recommended that Brown be replaced immediately if Dolan III wants to see the team recover from its deep stupor.

Schoenfeld immediately put the whole team on lexepro, saying that medication would likely make at least a small difference until a new coach can be found.

Brown, who read the report, said, "I got to hope that what this guy says isn't true. I got to hope there's light at the end of the tunnel. I got…I got…I got to go home to my wife Shelly."

Schoenfeld, in a footnote, suggested that further assessment would be needed to gauge the degree of Brown's "mental retardation;" he added that Isiah Thomas, the team's president of basketball operations, was "not at all depressed, because sociopaths don't get depressed."