NBA

Ghosts of Garden past aren’t enough to scare this team

BOSTON — Slowly, row by row, step by step, up the escalators and out the doors, they gave up the ghost, and gave up on the ghosts. The banners and the history were of no help. The crowd, energized and engaged, eager to carry the Celtics home after welcoming them home, was no factor.

So the people in green vanished. There was still plenty of ballgame left as they made their choice, more than 10 minutes left. They cut their losses anyway. Soon enough, the majority of the remaining fans were wearing orange and blue and they eagerly and happily pointed at the scoreboard. They eagerly and happily chanted, “Let’s go, Knicks!”

“That,” Carmelo Anthony would say later, “was a total team effort.”

It’s OK to say what you’re feeling now. It is. The Knicks throttled the Celtics again last night, 90-76, and this time it was a wire-to-wire, 48-minute thrashing. They sit on the doorstep of a sweep now, poised on the precipice of paying Boston back for handing them the broom two years ago.

And this time they didn’t just win the game, they looked good — looked great — doing it. They didn’t just brush the Celtics aside, they chased them out of the gym. Offense. Defense. On the break. Walking it up. And it wasn’t just Melo this time, either, though he did score 26 points.

Early it was Pablo Prigioni and Raymond Felton. Later it was J.R. Smith, at least until Smith’s elbow collided with Jason Terry’s jaw, an encounter which may or may not have been intentional but almost certainly will earn Smith a seat for tomorrow’s Game 4 wearing street clothes after drawing a flagrant-2 whistle.

PLAYOFF SCHEDULE

PHOTOS: BEST PLAYOFF MOMENTS

“I wish I was playing,” was Celtics coach Doc Rivers’ diplomatic assessment of that fourth-quarter messiness. “I didn’t like that.”

What he liked far less was the way the Knicks imposed their will on this game right from the beginning. That was always supposed to be the Celtics’ greatest gift, their iron constitution, their stubborn unwillingness to retreat. In the first two games, we saw long first-half flashes of that.

Last night, we saw none of it.

“You’ve got to be mentally tougher,” Rivers said. “And I didn’t think we were tonight.”

So now the Knicks sit a game away from the conference semifinals, a game away from their first playoff series win in 13 years. Anthony sits a game away from shattering the first-round glass ceiling, a game away from the first sweep of his career, and he’s well aware of that.

“To accomplish that would be spectacular,” Anthony said. “I never swept anybody. We know Game 4 is win-or-go-home for those guys, and I’ve been on that side of the pole plenty of times. We need to be prepared for the punches they’ll throw.”

He meant that figuratively — hopefully — but the message is plain: The Knicks don’t want to dance with the Celtics one second longer than they have to. If they lose Smith for a game, it’ll make the task a little harder, but it really shouldn’t matter; the way they’re playing, the level at which they’re playing, they can beat anyone.

Yes.

Anyone.

Your eyes aren’t lying. Maybe you don’t want to say it out loud just yet, or ever. But there’s something substantial behind what the Knicks are doing here, something that resonates beyond this three-game humbling of the Celtics, something that really could make this among the most enjoyable journeys they’ve taken in years.

“We really want this,” Anthony said. “We feel like it’s in the palm of our hand.”

It is, all of it, starting with their first shot at a close-out game tomorrow. The Knicks know as well as anyone how difficult that mission can be, because they somehow managed to rise up and stave off elimination in Game 4 last year against the Heat, at a time when they looked just as helpless and hapless and hopeless as the Celtics do now.

“Close-out games are always tough,” Knicks coach Mike Woodson said. “We need to treat Sunday the way we did tonight.”

You suspect they will, because that has been their mission throughout this weeklong splurge. The Knicks had already forced their will on the Celtics. Last night, they turned their sights to the fans, emptying the building early, sending a loud, unmistakable message. Bet on the sweep.