OKLAHOMA CITY — How loud was it?
“Loudest place in the league to play,” J.R. Smith said.
How important was it?
“That was a major step forward for our team,” Mike Woodson said.
How intense was it?
“I’ve never played in an NBA playoff game,” Chris Copeland said, “but I can’t imagine basketball being played any harder than the way it was today.”
It’s too late in the game for the Knicks to start throwing out platitudes, so they don’t even bother anymore. After spending two months of the season defending a terrific record, then 2 1/2 months trying to explain away a mediocre record, they are basking in what they’re doing now.
They are enjoying every second of this winning streak, which somehow reached an even dozen yesterday when they walked into Chesapeake Energy Arena, the House of Horrors the Oklahoma City Thunder call home, and outgunned the defending Western Conference champs 125-120. They are delighted with the fact that their magic number to clinch the Atlantic Division now sits at 1.
And they are excited — and why shouldn’t they be? — they are playing their very best basketball at precisely the point you want to be, with the regular season in the home stretch, with the playoffs well in sight, with every game soon to feel exactly as yesterday’s felt from opening tip to final buzzer.
“We were always convinced we were a good team,” said Carmelo Anthony, who won his personal duel with Kevin Durant in points (36-27) and rebounds (12-3) and, of course, on the scoreboard. “We can’t worry about what people think. A win is a win.”
Every step the Knicks have taken this year, even the positive ones — especially the positive ones — there have been skeptics and cynics awaiting them, carrying buckets filled with asterisks and justifications. Maybe it’s destined to be that way until they experience some postseason success, and maybe it’s supposed to be that way.
But there is no way to diminish this streak, which now has included wins over two of the top four teams in the West (Memphis and OKC), and there is no way to minimize what they did here yesterday afternoon against a fully-loaded Thunder team, in front of a full-throated crowd, which kept waiting for the devastating, game-clinching run that never came.
The Thunder already had erased what had been a 12-point Knicks lead, nudged in front by a point on a Durant 14-footer with 6:57 left, and it felt like the walls at Chesapeake were about to melt. But Jason Kidd drilled his fourth 3 of the game and later Anthony added a tip-in to put the Knicks back up by three … and the Thunder came back again, took another one-point lead on a Russell Westbrook layup…
“And then,” Anthony said, “we took it to another level.”
Over the next three minutes the Knicks would outscore OKC 11-2, and everyone would have a hand: Tyson Chandler with a dunk (fed by Raymond Felton), Melo on a tip, and then, most spectacularly, Smith with a 28-foot 3 (with Felton somehow getting him the ball as he was about to kiss floor) that made it 120-113 Knicks, with 56.8 seconds left.
And you never heard a place so loud become so quiet so quick.
“Kind of crazy,” Smith would say.
No crazier than what we’ve seen out of these Knicks recently, across these 12 games that started with an hour of quiet desperation in Salt Lake City at the end of what could have been — maybe should have been — a ruinous road trip. But Kurt Thomas wouldn’t let them lose that night, and 11 games later everyone else has taken turns guarding the streak, protecting it, extending it.
“We’ve beaten some good teams,” Woodson said, and even if nobody wants to believe that, they have. The Knicks became the seventh team to reach 50 wins; their record against the other six is 8-6.
“But we still have a long way to go,” Woodson said, and none of his players was about to argue the point.
Still, no one was going to stop smiling soon, either. You walk into the belly of the beasts and walk away unscathed, you’re allowed a day to enjoy that. Maybe even two.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com