NBA

Knicks’ move could bring defense back to Garden

HELPING HAND: If the Knicks are able to sign Tyson Chandler, Amar’e Stoudemire will no longer have to play center and can return to his natural power forward position. (Jason Szenes)

Maybe they were subliminal messages the Knicks were transmitting these past few months, when they would fill the basketball hours on MSG Network with game after bruising game from the 1993 Knicks and the 1994 Knicks, the teams that taught the Garden how to scream “DEEEE-FENSE!” at Volume 11 all over again.

All these years later, fans from other NBA towns tend to remember those Knicks as unwatchable goons who would worry about offense only when absolutely necessary. Still, especially these past few years, watching Mike D’Antoni’s defense-optional system, Knicks fans have grown wistful for those artless, bottom-line, maniacal Knicks.

The coach who reports to work this afternoon for the Knicks’ first post-lockout workout will be the same as the one who walked off the Garden court last April with the first echoes of fan discontent ringing in his ears. But soon enough, the pieces at his disposal — whether they were thrust upon him or granted him — will demand a different kind of outlook. Or else a different kind of coach.

That’s what acquiring Tyson Chandler means for the Knicks.

KNICKS DEAL FOR CHANDLER NEARLY COMPLETE

STOUDEMIRE OFFERED TO HORNETS

KNICKS 2011-12 SCHEDULE

He is not Bill Russell. And he is not Patrick Ewing. But he brings a uniquely rounded center’s skill set that the Knicks have not had in years: a rebounder, a shot-blocker, a defender, and someone whose offensive contributions — when his teams are going good — are almost beside the point.

Chandler will bring the Knicks immediate impact and immediate gravitas. He teams with Amar’e Stoudemire to give the Knicks one of the league’s most formidable frontcourts, and allows Stoudemire to shift permanently to the 4, without having to tinker with the pivot as he had to do more than occasionally a year ago.

Was it tempting to ponder the balletic high-flying dance that a mingling of Stoudemire, Carmelo Anthony and Chris Paul might have brought the Garden, if they’d been able to convert their wedding-toast vision to reality? That would have been fun to watch, no doubt.

Or would have been, before David Stern invariably would have shouted “Basketball reasons!” and slammed his veto stamp on it.

But the Knicks do the smart thing here, assuming the same small-time, small-minded owners who shamed Stern into canceling the Lakers’ perfectly legitimate Paul trade don’t invent a new set of daily rules forbidding them from acquiring any player over 6-feet tall.

They cast aside their blueprints of the past few years, when they waded and waited and dallied and tapped their toes while they fruitlessly pursued one megastar, landed a pair of stars, and all but chucked three seasons in the meantime.

Patience is one thing.

Inertia is something else. The Knicks clearly didn’t have enough pieces to entice New Orleans which, as it turns out, means Stern was spared having the NBA offices invaded by furious Knicks fans last night. Plan B for Paul would mean waiting another year. And the Knicks have done enough waiting.

So Chandler it was. And, barring a last-minute surprise (and we know now the NBA can invent them if it feels the itch), Chandler it is. Chandler, an erstwhile enigma who by last year had blossomed into possibly a critical element on the championship Mavericks. After a crowded, pedestrian post-Patrick string of centers, the Knicks finally have a worthy successor, someone who will be a bastion of strength underneath and, by all accounts, a welcome breeze of personality in the locker room, too.

All of this was overshadowed last night by the NBA doing what should be next to impossible: making the Lakers look sympathetic, like victims. A franchise that has hoarded iconic players from Mikan to Magic, Kareem to Kobe, West to Wilt, and now looks like the target of a corporate drive-by. Remarkable

The Knicks? Assuming this proceeds as it should, they are about to get much better, much tougher, much stronger, much less of an offensive freak show. And much more of a threat. After so many years of obsessing about tomorrow, suddenly today doesn’t look half-bad.

Assuming the NBA, which makes up rules as it goes along now like a neighborhood Wiffle Ball league, doesn’t object too strenuously, of course.