NBA

Melo, Knicks feel confident about playoff chances

IT’S TIME! J.R. Smith.

IT’S TIME! J.R. Smith. (Paul J. Bereswill)

From the ashes of the Isiah Thomas Era comes this game, Game 1 against the Celtics at the Garden, and for the first time in a long, long time, comes a Knicks team that believes.

Believes it can win more than a single playoff game.

Believes it can win more than a playoff series for the first time in 12 years.

Believes it can win it all, 40 years — 40 years! — after the last Knicks team to win a championship.

“I think we can make it, man. I think we can win it, to be honest with you,” Kenyon Martin told The Post. “We got everything in place. We got guys that can score the ball, we got guys that’s been in big playoff games, we got guys who’s been around and who hates losing. So we put all that together, and we defend in the way we know we can. … I don’t see why not.”

Jason Kidd, who waited 19 years for an NBA championship before reaching the top of the mountain in Dallas, was told coach Mike Woodson believes this Knicks team can win a title.

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“We all believe that in the locker room,” Kidd told The Post. “We all believe that if we do the things that we’re supposed to, that we can be hopefully the last team standing.”

Carmelo Anthony was on the last team standing 10 years ago at Syracuse. He has yet to be on the last team standing (or even close) in his professional career.

“We got to have confidence, we got to believe,” Anthony said. “We’re not going to underestimate these guys. We can’t. We know what they’re capable of.

“We’re just ready to play.”

Ready to play means Dee-Fense, on every single possession. It means sharing the ball, if not the way the Holzman Knicks did, then something close. It means turning the Garden into a deafening, miserable place, the last place the Celtics, or anyone else, want to be. It means the composure and the mental toughness to weather the inevitable trash-talking storm from Kevin Garnett.

It means Anthony letting the game come to him instead of forcing things against double teams. It means J.R. Smith taking the ball to the hole instead of hoisting 3s from First Avenue and showing up as the X-factor, Robin to Melo’s Batman.

“I saw a different J.R. this year, everybody saw a different J. R. this year, he’s locked in, he’s focused,” Anthony said. “He wants to win. It’s about that time.”

It means Kidd and Tyson Chandler showing their teammates how you perform in the playoffs. It means Raymond Felton penetrating and reminding New York what it was like when everyone was Linsane. It means Woodson going X and O to X and O with Doc Rivers. It means Kenyon Martin growling and prowling. It means Clyde Frazier screaming and dreaming.

It means playing to win, and winning Game 1 at all costs. “Game 1 might be the biggest game of the series,” Anthony said.

Anthony was asked how much better the Knicks are this year than they were two years ago when he arrived two months before the ill-fated Celtics series.

“Night and day,” he said. “It’s not even a comparison.”

Martin was asked if the Knicks match up well with the Celtics.

“Do they match up well with us? That’s the way I look at it,” he said.

Woodson was the last man standing as an assistant on a Pistons championship team, but never as a head coach. He thought about showing these Knicks his championship ring as a motivational tool, but did not in the end.

“He just talked about bringing it, and it never came back up,” Kidd said.

Neither Kidd nor Chandler trotted out their 2011 Mavericks championship ring.

“It’s good to look at,” Kidd said, “but at the same time, you want to be able to have your own. This is a different situation, different team. Me and Tyson won it together, but we want to all be in that room having that same next training camp.”

The Knicks were supposed to be too old. Here they are. They have peaked at the right time, and will concede nothing to the Heat. But first the Celtics. Anything can happen in the playoffs. This is a Win Now team built for this moment. Perhaps a Win Now or Never team.

“The time us now,” Anthony said.

Better believe it.