Until recently, the worst thing you could say about the Knicks was this: They were impossible to figure out, impossible to predict, impossible to corner. They would play well against good teams. They would play awful against woeful teams. They were a lot of things, but they were usually interesting.
Those seem like halcyon days now, don’t they?
It wasn’t just that the Celtics beat the Knicks last night, 96-86, scoring 23 of the game’s final 27 points. It was the way they beat them. It was the way the Knicks dominated Boston for 3 1/2 quarters . . . and then absolutely disappeared across the final six minutes. It was the way the Celtics, always the toughest guys in any room they walk into, slapped the Knicks around without consequence.
It was the fact that Chauncey Billups, the only Knick who has a ring, the only Knick whose championship profile wouldn’t look ridiculous on the Celtics, was moved to say this:
“What we need,” he said, “is to be more like them.”
And here’s the frustrating part right now, if you still harbor hopes of seeing the Knicks accomplish anything of substance across the next month. It isn’t only about the Celtics’ talent. We know about their Big Four, we know how many big shots they’ve made the past few years, how many big games they’ve won, what kind of gifts they bring.
But beyond that?
The Celtics get after you for 48 minutes. They don’t give games away. They run the floor and they don’t gripe about calls (at least not at the expense of giving up easy points) and they act far more like a team on the make than most teams on the make look.
“They get into you,” Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni said, “and they make it tough to find a good shot. That’s what they do.”
And what do the Knicks do?
“We got to a point,” D’Antoni said, “where I thought we panicked.”
The other day, Latrell Sprewell showed up at the Knicks’ game in Milwaukee, and it seemed a good time to get good and sentimental about his 1999 team that made such a magical run from the No. 8 seed in the East to the NBA Finals.
And it’s interesting: With last night’s loss, the Knicks finally retreated to sea level on the year, 35 up and 35 down with 12 games left — reminiscent of the way that 1999 team was 21-21 at its nadir, when Ernie Grunfeld got fired and it seemed like the whole plan was about to be lit on fire. And as if to add to the nostalgia, Billups even made a four-point play in the fourth quarter last night, as if to conjure Larry Johnson’s forever prayer against the Pacers that year.
And then the Celtics did everyone a favor.
They turned back into the Celtics, back into the beasts of the East, they went to work and started diving on loose balls and fighting for every rebound and contesting every shot. This is a team with credentials, with a title, with a pedigree, and yet they were the ones playing as if they are fighting for their very credibility.
The Knicks?
It now seems a long time ago when they were their own version of feel-good. And you don’t have to simply go back to the glory days of Raymond Felton and Danilo Gallinari, either. It has become fashionable — especially among Knicks folk who now embrace any excuse handed them — to talk about how difficult a process it can be getting a new team on the same page.
This team was on the same page. As recently as two weeks ago, the Knicks were five games over .500 for the season — three over post-trade — and had just come off their first buzzer-beating win, with Carmelo Anthony draining the winner. Blaming it on new guys learning to play together has gotten old.
It’s more like guys playing badly together.
“This is a work in progress,” D’Antoni said. “We have a month to get this figured out. And there’s no reason we can’t get this figured out.
Unless there is. Unless this is as much as we can expect from these Knicks this year. And if so, there’ll be lots of people with lots of explaining to do.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com