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You know what’s coming: the parquet below, the banners up on high. The constant loop of highlights, Havlicek stealing the ball and Bird stealing the ball and Dave Cowens diving after loose balls like Pete Rose reaching for third base.
You know how it’s going to sound, this first basketball game in Boston since the Patriots Day nightmare. You know how desperate the roars are going to be, maybe another sing-a-long national anthem at TD Garden, the crowd acting as sixth and seventh and eighth men, willing, cajoling, coaxing …
“Payback time,” Celtics guard Avery Bradley said.
And here’s the thing: The Knicks have a glorious opportunity Friday night to step on the Celtics, to lay some boot black on their necks, to nudge them ever closer to the abyss. Maybe the temptation will be to feel good about this, to rhapsodize about the 87-71 throttling they laid on the Celtics, to admire their handiwork like Reggie staring one all the way into the upper deck.
That would be a mistake.
The Knicks know that would be a mistake.
“All we’ve done,” Kenyon Martin said, “is defend our home court. We’ve got a lot of work left to do.”
That was the company line after Game 1, and remains so, and it’s good that the Knicks feel that way, but there is something else, too: The Knicks now have the chance to do more than just win the series. They can take care of their business in a hurry. That option is there for them. You win Friday night, you can officially describe your lead as “commanding.”
You win Friday night, you can strip whatever hopes still flicker among the diminished and diminishing Celtics. Maybe you close the series in four games, or five, get some rest before the next round. Let barking ligaments and screaming joints and achy muscles heal and recover.
The Celtics are vulnerable. Good teams put vulnerable ones out of their misery. Consider it another arc in the Knicks’ playoff learning curve.
“Everyone is locking in,” said Ray Felton, who had another terrific game — 16 points and seven rebounds and some frantic, frenetic pushing of the ball all night long. “We understand what we need to do.”
And that is: Don’t loiter. Don’t dawdle. The Celtics are a stubborn team, Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce are proud playoff performers and Doc Rivers does have a full bag of tricks. But they are alone. Rajon Rondo’s in civvies. Ray Allen’s in Miami. The Knicks are not performing sorcery here. They were 12 1/2 games better than the Celtics across 82. They are the better team. They are the much better team.
Close them.
“Now we travel to Boston, to a hostile environment, to wonderful fans who know basketball, like our fans do,” Knicks coach Mike Woodson said. “We’ve got to go in there and be solid. You need to play almost perfect basketball to win in the playoffs on the road. Get your rest now and figure out how we can be better on Friday.”
They’ll need to be. You know what’s coming. They know what’s coming. The legends will be lined up like duckpins everywhere, Hondo and Cooz and Cornbread, trying to roust the karmic caretakers from their slumber. It shouldn’t matter. These Celtics are broken and wounded. They are vulnerable. They are begging to be swept.
So sweep them. Take care of your business, get a magic marker, scrawl your place in the second round as soon as possible. What we’ve seen so far in this series can be reduced to this: When the Knicks fully commit defensively the Celtics cannot — cannot — score. The offense remains more ragged than it’s been, but that’s what happens when the other guys ramp up their defense, too.
“We are who we are,” Rivers said. “We can’t apologize for that. That is who we have been left with and I think it’s good enough to win. So far I haven’t gotten them in the right spots. We can play better, have to play better.”
That’s the trick now. That’s the chore. The C’s legs are wobbly, their hearts teetering. You throw one more haymaker at them, they’re fixing to fall. Throw that haymaker. Step on the accelerator. The Knicks will face the full historical wrath of the Celtics in two nights. It won’t be easy to get this done.
If they’re really as good as they believe they are, they’ll get it done anyway.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com