It’s hard to imagine that anyone remembers the last Knicks playoff win in the Garden more vividly than Jeff Van Gundy.
The former Knicks coach still can describe the 2001 Eastern Conference quarterfinals against the Raptors. More specifically, Sunday, April 22, when the Knicks won the opening game of the series, 92-85 — the last time the Garden faithful were able to embrace a postseason basketball victory.
“I always say, a regular-season game in MSG sounds like a playoff game, and a playoff game in MSG sounds like no place I’ve ever been,” Van Gundy told The Post yesterday. “It’s deafening, it’s intense, it’s passionate, and [the fans] come early. It’s really a special place to be in the playoffs.”
It’s a place that every Knick on the current roster will get to experience for the first time tomorrow night, when the Celtics come to town holding a 2-0 advantage in the first-round series.
“After a drought like the Knicks have experienced,” Van Gundy said of the seven-year postseason hiatus, “it’s going to sound like a totally new place.”
No matter what, tomorrow can’t quite be like that 2001 series, which was one of the most surreal in Knicks’ playoff history. It started before the first jump ball went up, when anti-Semitic comments by Knicks guard Charlie Ward were leaked to the press.
“Jews are stubborn,” Ward was quoted as saying during a Bible-study group. “Why did they persecute Jesus unless he knew something they didn’t want to accept. They had his blood on their hands.”
Ward said it was all taken out of context, and when he took the floor for Game 1, he was booed lustily.
“The hurt it caused [was] not representative of who Charlie was,” Van Gundy said. “They booed him, but after eight or so years with the Knicks, [the fans] knew what he stood for and what a quality person he is. It was an unfortunate situation.”
The situation only got more unfortunate after Game 1, when Marcus Camby’s sister, Monica, was held at knifepoint at her home in South Windsor, Conn.
The man who did it, Roy Croom, was a convicted sex offender and perpetual criminal — and Monica’s ex-boyfriend.
Starting at 3 a.m., Croom held Monica in the house against her will for about eight hours.
As per the kidnapper’s request, Camby showed up in person after a tough individual Game 1, when he went 3-for-13 from the field but still managed 18 rebounds.
When Camby took the floor three days later for Game 2, it was clear he wasn’t all there. And in retrospect, Van Gundy regrets letting Camby suit up.
“I shouldn’t even have given him the choice in Game 2,” Van Gundy said of the game that resulted in a 20-point Raptors’ blowout. “He was so valuable and important, unfortunately I made a bad decision.”
Camby chose not to play in Game 3, suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome, and the badly undersized Knicks won a game that Van Gundy called “one of the best games I’ve ever been a part of.”
But then Camby returned and the Knicks lost the next two games, dropping the series 3-2.
“It all sounds like excuses,” Van Gundy said, echoing a sentiment that 10 years later still could ring true in the ears of the current Knicks. “Unfortunately, things happen.”
bcyrgalis@nypost.com