Andrea Bargnani ruled out for Monday night and other power forward notes

Bad news for those looking forward to a "DalemBargs" sequel -- Italian large gentleman Andrea Bargnani has officially been ruled out for Monday night's preseason clash with the Milwaukee Bucks:

Bargnani won't play tomorrow as he didn't practice during this gap.

— Marc Berman (@NYPost_Berman) October 19, 2014

"This gap" is in reference to the four-day period since the Knicks' previous game. But Bargnani's hamstring problem goes back farther -- he has been held out since starting at the power forward spot in New York's Oct 8. preseason opener.

The Knicks will play their final three preseason games this week -- Monday, Wednesday and Friday -- so time is running out. Bargnani has already lost valuable time practicing the Triangle, which we all know is the most complex system in the history of mankind -- two-time Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Linus Pauling allegedly once sat through a series of Triangle sets, threw up his hands and asked, "What the fuck is going on here?" Will Bargnani be ready for the regular season? Will Derek Fisher play an unprepared, bumbling Bargs when the games finally count? Nobody but the coach knows for sure.

In more promising power forward news, Fisher announced that Amar'e Stoudemire's medical staff-mandated minutes restrictions will not factor into the coach's decision as to whether or not he starts.

"We’re excited that we can go into the season with an open mind in that regard and it's worked well so far," Fisher said.

It would appear that Fisher doesn't have a set policy regarding Amar'e at this point...or at least he isn't making it public. As much as I love to dump on Mike Woodson, he did a good job keeping STAT healthy last season, holding the Big Wine Bather out of the lineup as a healthy scratch 10 times. Fisher would be wise to follow that example if he is going to nurse those ragged knees through a full NBA campaign, starter or no.

So who will start at the 4 on Monday? Fisher is still playing it close to the vest:

We'll talk about the last four days as coaches, kind of what we observed during a lot of our scrimmages this week and a lot of our five-man activities. We've mixed the groups up a lot and we have some different guys in the frontcourt at times, different guys in the backcourt so we'll kind of reassess who has been effective this week and try to put a good lineup together."

C'mon, man...we all know you want to start Quincy Acy again. Just say it! Respect the beard!