GREENBURGH, N.Y. –- Once a day, a different Knicks fan asks Phil Jackson the same question.

“[They] want to know how long do we have to wait," Jackson says.

The Zen Master may have the answers -- or at the very least a profound fortune cookie-like saying -- to many of life’s questions.

But Jackson won’t have the answer to the one question Knicks fans ask most.

There’s no telling how long this rebuilding process will take until Jackson can find more help for Carmelo Anthony next summer. And making matters tougher is the fact that the Knicks will likely be a year behind LeBron James and the Cavaliers by the time Phil does find reinforcements.

The Knicks will spend this training camp, and pretty much all season, learning to play with a new cast, adapting and adjusting their games and minds to the triangle system under Derek Fisher, who is coaching for the first time.

In Ohio, LeBron has started his Cavaliers title march. It may take Cleveland some time, but James will spend every minute of this season learning about his new teammates and teaching Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving how to win.

The Cavs might not jell immediately, and there are no guarantees Cleveland will win a title. But while the league’s newest Big Three gets acquainted and only gets better, the Knicks will be busy taking baby steps within the triangle as Phil tries to forge a new culture.

It will be no easy chore. Anthony and his teammates will also have to adjust their way of thinking and adopt Jackson’s team-first principles. Jackson challenges his players mentally and spiritually as much as physically.

“There’s a period of time in which it takes a scorer with mainly a scoring mentality to play with the idea that you can’t score every time you touch the ball,” Jackson said Friday. “A lot of the scorers, it’s a natural instinct: I get the ball, I look to score. Looking to score is one thing, holding the ball is another.”

Like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, Carmelo will have to make the hardest adjustment of his basketball life and rid himself of some habits he’s had for a lifetime –- habits that got him to where he is today.

And he has to do this while making his teammates –- some of them new teammates –- better in a system foreign to him.

So how long will it take Phil?

“It’s expediently happened right next door,” Jackson said, referring to the New York Rangers. “It’s a step-by-step process.”

As Jackson will be the first to tell you, he enjoyed championship success by taking over teams that had already endured many of their growing pains and needed Jackson’s direction as the final piece to the puzzle. In Chicago, he had Michael, Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant. In Los Angeles, Jackson had Kobe and Shaq.

Here in New York, Jackson has Melo and some parts. But he didn’t inherit a championship-ready core. With apologies to Amar'e Stoudemire, Jackson doesn’t even have a second All-Star in his prime on the roster.

“This team has not got a personality,” Jackson said, comparing this current situation to when he took over the Bulls and Lakers. “Over 35 percent of [the] team has changed. So we still have to kind of come together in a bonding way that creates trust, teamwork, identity, some things like that.”

The Knicks have enough to make the playoffs this season in what should be a tougher Eastern Conference. Jackson estimates that it will take “45 to 46 wins to get into the playoffs.”

But short of the Knicks surprising everyone and making a magical run like the last Knicks team to make the Finals in 1999, changes will come by next summer. Jackson has to find another star, if not two, to support Anthony and put the Knicks in the discussion with the Cavs.

And even if that happens, the Knicks will have to go through a learning process again next camp as those new pieces will likely have to learn the triangle and develop chemistry with Melo.

Meanwhile, LeBron, Love and Irving will be preparing for their second tour together. The Cavs’ core will be a year stronger, wiser and better.

For now, the Knicks open camp Monday and begin the arduous process of learning the intricacies of the triangle and all the possibilities it can bring.

“It takes probably a month to six weeks for a team to kind of jell and the idea of how to do this together,” Jackson said. “So we have a month of training camp, a couple of weeks in November to kind of see how everything is blending together. And that can vary according to injuries.

“We try to control what we can control.”

How long will it take Jackson to turn this team around?

Ask him again next October.