Mike Vaccaro

Mike Vaccaro

NBA

Knicks ignoring edge of abyss

TORONTO — Afterward, Mike Woodson was adamant how he would be spending his Saturday night: planted in front of a television, watching the Hawks-Heat game. It was the same perch he chose after watching the Knicks grind their way through a 108-100 victory over the Raptors on Friday night.

The other half of the equation didn’t work out so well, the officials overturning a key block/charge call, the Nets — who, to their credit seemed to want to win a game they really didn’t need to win — missing some important shots, the Hawks slicing their magic number for eliminating the Knicks to the skinniest possible: 1.

Woodson, 775 kilometers from home, tried to be as philosophical as he could be, given the dire arithmetic.

“We have to hope that Atlanta loses the next three and we win the next three,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, tilting his head. “That’s the only way we have a shot of getting in.

It probably will little surprise you to discover the Knicks themselves were a little less obsessive than Woodson about tracking the Hawks.

“Didn’t know they lost until you just told me,” J.R. Smith said.

“I don’t have time for that,” Carmelo Anthony said.

What he means was almost certainly far less callous than the way that sounds. All year it has been Melo who has sounded the trumpet of the optimist, who kept believing tomorrow would be better, or next week, or next month. Only it never got better. Not quite. Not really. And at this point, there is little point worrying about things out of your grasp.

“We can only control the things we can control, like playing and beating the Raptors,” Anthony said, “and like getting ready for the Bulls on Sunday.”

Friday he was splendid against the Raptors, playing at his do-everything best, even as his right shoulder — his shooting shoulder — howled most of the night. He scored 30 points, made 13 of his 14 free throw attempts, added eight rebounds, three assists, three steals.

It was enough to buy the Knicks at least one more day of season, maybe even another relevant home game on Sunday if the Heat decide to play the full 48 Saturday night in Atlanta. But what else? Woodson wouldn’t use the word “miracle,” but that’s what’s required. Does accuracy help the cause at all?

There isn’t a Knicks fan alive who can’t rattle off six or seven games that don’t even require that much imagination for the Knicks to win instead of lose, losses that are the difference between fighting for seedings right now and fighting for their very springtime existence.

“I never thought we’d be in this position,” Woodson said, “and we need a little luck. But we’ve got to do our part.”

It’s basketball on the very fringe of the chase, when you have to rely on a team that has already lost 53 games to help rescue you (as the Knicks did the other night when the Celtics threw a scare into the Hawks) or a team able to rest a gaggle of primary players, as the Nets did Friday.

That’s no way to live. The Knicks already had gotten far more assistance than they deserved. Think about how shocking — how ridiculous — it is that on the final Saturday of the season, some 11 games south of .500, the Knicks still are not mathematically eliminated.

We think of a team making a desperate push for the playoffs, usually we think of a desperate stretch of stolen excellence. We think of the Giants rallying back from 14 back of the Dodgers in 1951 by, essentially, winning every day. We think of the Yankees catching the Red Sox in 1978 by doing virtually the same thing.

Even last year’s Knicks, when threatened for the No. 2 seed by the Pacers and for the Atlantic Division by the Nets, wound up finding it within themselves to rattle off 14 straight wins in March and April. That’s what we think of as a playoff push.

This team? This is wishing and praying. This is drawing to an inside straight. The Knicks left Canada with their season intact, and that may be the one team goal they accomplish this year. It was supposed to be more than this.

So much more.