NBA

Knicks, Nets in City lights

Yes, yes: For the next few days (at the least) and for the next few weeks (if we’re lucky), we are about to remind everyone what a terrific baseball town we are, just how perfect a pairing Yankee Stadium is with autumn. We got a little taste of that the other day at Citi Field, R.A. Dickey winning his 20th in front of the most boisterous Mets crowd of the year; the Stadium will surely measure up fine beginning tomorrow, against the Red Sox.

Yes, yes: We are only four weeks into a football season that, as with most football seasons of recent vintage, arrived heavy with expectation no matter if you favor the vestments of the blue or the green. We have the Giants in Philly tonight, with the possibility of getting on a terrific early-season run if they can steal one. We have the Jets in their eternal state of combustion, always seemingly on the edge of … something.

Quietly, though, basketball will return to our city over the next few days, the city game renewing itself, the Knicks and the Nets reporting for duty for a full season, and for all that lies ahead. Tomorrow, the first of October, serves as something of a perfect launch point, one month and counting until Nov. 1, when the Knicks cross the bridge and help the Nets open both the season and their era as the Brooklyn Nets.

Jay-Z officially opened the Barclays Center on Friday night, and workmen are hurrying to complete the second phase of Madison Square Garden’s three-stage renovation, and soon enough basketball will provide a nightly soundtrack to the city’s rhytmns and its rituals. We have talked about this season for so long, the basketball junkies among us, and now, in a snap, it’ll be upon us.

And for the basketball junkies among us, it will be a six-month all-you-can-eat buffet.

The Knicks come ready-made with their usual dramas and narratives, Carmelo Anthony and Tyson Chandler fresh from their gold-medal triumph in London, Amar’e Stoudemire fresh from his humbling postseason confrontation with both the Heat and a fire extinguisher. They are the team with the long local history and the fiercely loyal fans, and as in any prize fight of real significance, the belt remains theirs until it is taken away.

The Nets believe they are in position to take it away. They believe they are one of the active forces galvanizing the renaissance of Brooklyn, that they have assembled a team that will siphon off folks in their new home borough who have spent their sporting lifetimes rooting for the team from Manhattan. The Nets? There are a lot of folks out there who have spent portions of their lives caring for them. There is the long-abandoned faction of Long Island fans raised on the ABA. There are the Jersey fans whose loyalties were cryogenically frozen the past few years. And the newbies.

Tomorrow, this all starts for real. A month from tomorrow, the Knicks will play the Nets at Barclays Center, and a new era of New York basketball will be upon us for good, for real, forever. For the basketball junkies among us, baseball and football are just helping them mark time for the time being. The city game is about to be the city obsession all over again.

Vac’s whacks

Shannon Forde, Mets senior director of media relations, is one of the bright lights for those of us who cover sports in this marvelous city, a brilliant ray of sunshine, even when the tarp is off at Citi Field. She is fighting Stage 4 breast cancer now, and an army of her friends are joining her in that battle. If you would like to be one of them, please visit www. HopeShinesFor Shannon.com.

* You know how you know when you’ve got yourself a good television character? Every time Gyp Rosetti appears on the screen during “Boardwalk Empire,” my blood pressure rises another 20 points.

* For all the struggles he endured this year, I’m pretty sure the Mets would be completely out of their minds to even ponder trading Ike Davis.

* Rasheed Wallace? Didn’t he used to have some worthy battles under the boards with Richie Guerin?

Whack Back at Vac

Andy Romanic: Now that the replacement referees debacle is over I have two questions: 1) How do you become a Lingerie League referee? And 2) how much do I have to pay for the job?

Vac: Of all the things I questioned about the fake refs, that’s the one that haunts me: You’d rather work in this league than in that one?

Geoffrey B. Stuart: As pathetic as the Jets’ offense is, it really needs to get out of this appease-Tebow mode. Put the best players on the field. If Tim Tebow is their best third-down receiver, then that explains why the Jets cannot move the ball on offense.

Vac: People who question Mark Sanchez’s accuracy have to give him this: When he targeted Tebow in Miami last week, he drilled No. 15 right on the melon.

@kranepool: I try to tell folks why I’m a Mets fan but it’s tough to put into words. Thursday at Citi Field was why it’s great to be a Mets fan.

@MikeVacc: I don’t know that I’ve ever seen fans enjoy an otherwise meaningless game quite so completely. Which means it wasn’t quite so “meaningless” after all, right?

Richard Siegelman: I’m glad the unsaintly Saints are now 0-3 because, although I’ve rooted for New Orleans ever since Hurricane Katrina, I now root against the team ever since Bountygate.

Vac: You think Bill Parcells is happy he took a pass on this mess yet?