BOSTON — You want to know how a building, how a team, how a city gets in your head? Mike Woodson can tell you how a building, how a team, how a city can get in your head. Woodson played in the NBA from 1980 through 1990, 11 seasons in which there were really only two teams worth talking about.
One of them was the Celtics.
One of them was the Lakers.
Together, they dominated the decade, and they could play with your emotions, your psyche, your game, everything. You wanted to beat the Celtics in Boston, at the old Garden, in the ’80s? Yeah. Good luck to you. You wanted to beat the Lakers at the old Forum in the ’80s? Godspeed.
“This was always a rough place to play,” Woodson said last night, after the Knicks had beaten the Celtics 100-85 at TD North Garden, which will forever have to be a stand-in for “this,” for the Old Garden, for the place that hatched so many nightmares for so many teams and so many players for so many years.
Don’t believe it? Ask Woodson. You thought, maybe, it was a bit odd he always has seemed to relish the games he’s worked in this city as the Knicks’ coach? Even yesterday, with Kevin Garnett out, with the Celtics in a serious funk, Woodson spent the morning building up how important it was to beat the Celtics in Boston and met with stone-faced satisfaction the victory his players delivered in the evening.
Wonder why?
“I played 11 years in the league,” he said. “And I never once won a game in Boston Garden.” You weren’t getting a smile after that.
Or this: “I didn’t win one in the Forum, either.”
And you know something? He’s right. You could look it up. He never did. Eleven times Woodson’s teams played the Celtics on the road: with the Knicks, the Kansas City Kings, the Sacramento Kings, the Rockets and the Clippers. Interestingly, the very first time Woodson played a game against the Celtics in a road uniform — Oct. 23, 1980, his fifth game as a pro — the Knicks beat the Celtics in overtime 109-107. Campy Russell knocked down the game-winner.
But that game was at the Hartford Civic Center.
The rest of his career, every year except for 1981-82, when he managed to miss Boston despite playing 83 games with the Nets and Kings, he took a collar, and it was never especially close: 142-123 one year, 132-111 another, 121-90 and 126-109 and 118-101. Only once did he ever play in a game in the Garden that was decided by single digits — and that was 119-110 in 1984.
Talk about a tough room.
His nightmares at the Forum were more numerous, mostly because he had to endure some wicked beatings playing for some wretched teams in the West. Twenty-three games. Twenty-three losses. But at least he came close a couple of times. He played 50 minutes for the Kings on March 8, 1986, scored 22, but the Lakers prevailed in double overtime 122-121. His Rockets fell 97-86 in ’89, keeping it close in large part to Woodson’s 17 points. And that … well, that was that.
Thirty-three games in the two most storied arenas of the ’80s, the Garden and the Forum. Thirty-three losses.
But, hey: He was 1-0 in Connecticut.
Yeah. Don’t expect Woodson to apologize for the Knicks winning a second time this year at the New Garden, for taking advantage of the depleted Boston roster, for reducing the magic number to end the Celtics’ Atlantic Division reign to five (and 10 over the idle Nets to win the division outright). Don’t expect him to minimize the Knicks’ fifth straight win, which elevated them a season-high 17 games over .500.
“I mean, it’s hard to win here,” he said. “Boston has been dominant. The history in this place is phenomenal. It was tough for me. It’s tough for a lot of teams to come here and win.”
There are some things you can question Mike Woodson on, but this is not one of them: He knows how to lose in Boston. So let the man savor this a bit. He’s earned it.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com