NBA

Finding strong from the week

We are still in that segment of season when anything remains possible, when everyone remains viable. Charles Barkley once said he disliked the first few weeks of a season because “the lousy teams don’t know that they’re lousy yet.”

This is also true: This early, the great teams aren’t all that sure how to be great yet. And everyone else? Well …

So, yes: One week into the season, four games into the 82-game slog, maybe nobody is rushing to book hotel rooms for New York City for next June just yet. One week in, four games in, the fact that only one team — your New York Knickerbockers — has yet to lose is not enough to knock the presumed hierarchy of the NBA upside-down.

So we’ll settle for this:

One week in, four games in, it’s a hell of a lot of fun to watch these Knicks play basketball. They are 4-0 after a proficient 104-94 dismantling of the shorthanded Mavericks, the first time since 1993 they’ve been 4-0, the first time in … well, ever, they’re 4-0 with four double-digit victories.

“They are a good team,” Dallas coach Rick Carlisle said. “In my opinion, they are one of the handful of teams that has a chance to come out of the East.”

We will pause here to let you roll that last sentence over your gums a couple of times …

OK. We are back. So as you can see, it isn’t only you, long-suffering Knicks fan, who finds it impossible not to get carried away by what you have seen. It isn’t only you who marvels at the depth of the roster Glen Grunwald has assembled and how hard they play on defense for coach Mike Woodson.

It isn’t just you who shakes your head now watching Carmelo Anthony play varsity defense (and get after the basket, rather than settling passively for jumpers on offense), who admires what Ronnie Brewer and Raymond Felton bring to the game every night, who can’t even begin to believe you’re chanting “Sheed!” for Rasheed Wallace, the unlikeliest Garden folk hero since Latrell Sprewell.

And it isn’t just you who finds yourself enjoying every second of Jason Kidd’s limited nightly engagements.

“They have Jason Kidd,” Carlisle said, “and Jason Kidd is going to bring everyone’s level of focus, concentration and intensity up an awful lot. That’s just how things work. He’ll have the broadcasters in a defensive stance.”

It is improbable, damn near impossible, to believe a 39-year-old man who played just 16 minutes — and none of the game’s final 16 — could have that kind of an impact. But he does. Last night there were a couple of layups, a couple of free throws, a couple of steals, a couple of assists.

A bit of this, a dash of that.

“You see him working so hard,” Felton said, “you’d better match that.”

Yes, it is one week. It is four games. The Knicks have three road games coming up. The road can break your heart. The road can strip your spirit. The Knicks aren’t likely to come back from Orlando, San Antonio and Memphis 8-0. Nobody expects that. But nobody expected 4-0, either.

Well, almost nobody.

“This team,” Kidd said, “has a lot of basketball wisdom. A lot of experience. And we have some unbelievable talent, too. It can be as good as it wants to be.”

He’s right. After so many years of watching some mind-numbing basketball, the Knicks’ two defining characteristics are almost dumb-founding: their nightly commitment to defense (last night: 20 turnovers, 40 percent shooting, another team held under 100 points) and a sky-high collective basketball IQ. Both may start with the ex-Mavericks — Tyson Chandler and Kidd — but aren’t limited to them.

“Our defense took over and brought us home,” Woodson said. “These guys on this team … they know how to play.”

Maybe they don’t yet know their place in the NBA hierarchy, an upside-down world in which the Lakers are 2-4 and the Timberwolves 4-1, where the Knicks, at 4-0, are the only team in the NBA with a zero on the right side of the hyphen.

Or maybe it’s something better. Maybe they just don’t care about hierarchy.