Sports

Johnnies-Knicks twinbill makes Garden an Eden

They don’t do doubleheaders at Madison Square Garden the way they used to. Time was, the NBA actually would schedule regular-season twinbills for the Garden, and often the undercard would be a Celtics-Lakers game, or something of that ilk, the main-event Knicks often serving the part of JV afterthought.

Time was, the best day on the basketball calendar was the first day of the Big East Tournament, back when the Big East was a nine-team league. On the first night, Seton Hall invariably would play Providence in front of friends and family, and the next day the survivor would join the seven in the main draw for four games stretching from noon until midnight.

What made that so special was it was the only day when you had a quadruple-header. In the final years of the expanded Big East, with its everybody-gets-a-trophy attitude and complicated bye system, it feels like there’s 10 games a day for a week, like an AAU tournament in Vegas.

That’s what makes today such a splendid day at the big gym on top of Penn Station. The Garden splits its personality periodically during the course of a sporting calendar, hockey sharing the bill with basketball, the college game getting a matinee to partner with the Knicks in a separate-admission night game.

We rarely have a day like this, though. At noon, St. John’s will take on Pittsburgh, then the workers will come out, peel off a few logos and add a couple of others, take off the college 3-point line, and the Knicks will host the Sixers. Which means that for the better part of 10 hours, the place that bills itself as the World’s Most Famous Arena actually will feel the part. Through and through.

It’s one thing to schedule doubleheaders; it’s something else for those games to reek of substance and intrigue. That’s usually impossible to predict, a happiness of happenstance. And when it comes along ….

The Johnnies probably can’t clinch a spot in the NCAA Tournament today, but they certainly can pad their resume significantly if they can take out the 20th-ranked Panthers. The college game tends to get camouflaged around here in years like this when both the Knicks and Nets can anchor conversations.

But it would be a wonderful thing if the Johnnies could sneak their way into the NCAAs for a second time in three years. It’s been a strange season for the locals. Iona lost for the sixth time in seven games yesterday — those six losses have been by a total of 11 points. Manhattan has had its moments. The Jersey schools have struggled. And the hoops season always is just a little more interesting when St. John’s is in play.

The Knicks? Well, we can — and do, and will — invest gallons of ink and angst wondering if and when they will rediscover their mojo. It is a fool’s errand to attach too much significance to any regular-season game, especially No. 53. But at some point the Knicks are going to have to beat somebody. Right? Right? Bueller?

So that is the fiesta awaiting us today, and I hope there are a lucky few who take in both games. A long time ago — March 12, 1983, to be specific — a bunch of buddies and I watched St. John’s beat Boston College in the Big East championship game. After, a couple of the more daring — they know who they are; sadly I wasn’t among them — hid under the stands behind one of the baskets and managed to sneak into the Knicks game and watched Bernard King and Bill Cartwright torch the Blazers.

A day like that — like this — can inspire you that way. Though that probably would be a little harder to pull off these days, alas.

Whack Back at Vac

Jim Behrle: How’s this for a nickname for the Mets this year: “The Doubtfield.”

Vac: And after watching enough games, Mets fans may want to take a sip from The Ginfield.

Richard Siegelman: Since the Olympics already accepts professional basketball players, why not “save” wrestling with the likes of Hulk Hogan, The Rock and Bruno Sammartino?

Vac: Sign me up for that. Immediately.

@TimBoTheTruth: Mike Woodson’s hand is being forced with the Amar’e [Stoudemire] contract. He slows down the offense so much it makes the Van Wyck at rush hour seem fast.

@MikeVacc: There are times you wish the Knicks would take the word “offensive” less literally.

Stewart Summers: Melky Cabrera says he isn’t sure whether he will receive a World Series ring from the Giants, he hasn’t been asked for his ring size. I would imagine his ring size is a wee bit smaller since he tested positive for PEDs. Assuming he’s stopped using them.

Vac: I wonder if the Blue Jays have decided to order two cap sizes for him?

Vac’s Whacks

I’m afraid by the time all is said and done, I’ll have been a lot fonder of the Jason Kidd/Kenyon Martin pairing as Nets in 2003 than their revival as “The Sunshine Boys” for the Knicks in 2013.

* Even when the Nets slip on banana peels — and they’ve had plenty of pratfalls already — doesn’t it seem as if they have about 90 percent more joy and fun attached to them than the Knicks right now?

* There may be no greater surprise than the book you stumble upon and then, quite literally, cannot put down. Please trust me when I tell you “After Visiting Friends,” by GQ’s deputy editor Michael Hainey, is such a book, a rich accounting of learning the truth behind his father’s death many years before. Start it in the morning, because if you start at night, as I did, you will never get to sleep.

* Richie Guerin already was Hall of Famer as a reference point for old Knicks fans. As in: “I’ve been going to the games since Richie Guerin and …” Also: Let’s get Bernard in this year, OK?