It is what he should do. Barkley said once, and famously, that he wanted to be a “Giant for Life.” He can’t possibly still think that’s the best thing for his football life. Great Giants rarely leave on their own, not in their prime. He should.

There is still a big chance he ends up back with the Giants. Maybe he and Jones can still team up and play the Giants back into the playoffs, something they did the season before last. It’s just not the way to bet. For now, in the moment, Barkley is the story because the Giants declined putting a franchise tag on him. There’s still the window for him to work out a deal and stay, for him and for them. He should want to go, and be a star running back with a star quarterback, or he’s never going to win a Super Bowl.

Jim Brown, the best running back of them all, won one NFL title, with the ’64 Browns. Walter Payton won one, with the best damn defense anybody had ever seen. Barry Sanders never won. Eric Dickerson never won.

Emmitt Smith was great on the greatest Cowboys team of them all. But he had Troy Aikman. And Michael Irvin. Terrell Davis, also in the Hall of Fame, had himself a night once in Super Bowl XXXII, when the Broncos beat the Packers. He still had John Elway on his side. A lot of bad things have happened to Barkley in Jersey. The fact remains that the Giants are 30 games under .500 since he got with them. Running backs never make all the difference, they just can’t. And don’t. It’s why you don’t take them with the second pick even if they do turn out to be great.

There is nothing fair about what has happened to Barkley here since Gettleman decided to take a running back with the second overall pick, the way the Jets once took another Penn State back, Blair Thomas, back in 1990 (Blair was the Zach Wilson of running backs, then).

But then you better believe Barkley became Offensive Rookie of the Year, with over 2,000 total yards. Even after he hurt his knee, he came back to be the best player on the Giants team that not only made it back to the postseason, but won a playoff game on the road. Without question, he was the best player on that ’22 team. Then Jones became the Gettleman All-Star who got paid. Barkley did not. He certainly must dream about being the kind of centerpiece of a real team the way Christian McCaffrey, son of an old Giant, is with the 49ers. Right now, the Giants aren’t close to being that team. It’s why he might be gone now and Jones might be gone after the season if he doesn’t stay on the field and produce. At which point Giant fans will be talking about Gettleman, not Barkley, not Jones, being the worst pick the Giants have made lately.

Of course, it wasn’t supposed to end up like this, not after the Giants did win that playoff game against the Vikings, the week before they got treated like the junior varsity by an Eagles team on its way to the Super Bowl. Barkley had once again gained over 1,300 rushing yards. He had caught 57 passes. Jones? Even after a season when he’d thrown only 15 touchdown passes in 16 starts, played the game of his life against the Vikings. It turned out to be the first $80 million performance — so far — in all of Giants’ history.

Again and again: Saquon Barkley, at his best, has been a great Giant. He has carried himself like one. He has had the same three head coaches that Jones has had: Pat Shurmur, Joe Judge (another sparkling pick by Gettleman), now Brian Daboll. He sure does have to look across the country, and at the way McCaffrey is used by Kyle Shanahan, and imagine the possibilities of being featured like that, in football circumstances like those. They’re just not the circumstances in which he currently finds himself at MetLife Stadium.

March 6, 2024: Not it!

He only just turned 27. He has football miles on him, for sure, because all star running backs do, 1,200 carries so far in his career, nearly 300 receptions. He has come all the way back from ACL reconstruction surgery on his right knee back in 2020. Even last season, in a mess of a season for the Giants, he nearly got back to 1,000 rushing yards despite missing three games.

“[Barkley] is a guy we’d like to have back,” Giants general manager Joe Schoen said before the team made the determination not to franchise Barkley was officially made.

There is absolutely a chance, and a good one, that Barkley could still come back. He may be about to find out that what the Giants paid him last season — about $11 million, all-in — might not be far off from the best deal he can make for himself. He has a business decision to make. So, too, do the Giants in a quarterback world, even though they’ve got quarterback problems, too.

Barkley really has been a great Giant. Great Giants don’t leave. He should. It might not be the best thing for them. But if he can find a quarterback, it is the best thing for him.

Alonso is a homegrown, home run talent. He has hit more home runs since he got to the big leagues than Judge has hit, or anybody else in the sport has hit, for that matter, and it’s not as if all the other guys haven’t had the same chance. And when this season is over, the Mets can’t let him go hit his home runs somewhere else. It wouldn’t be as dumb as trading away Tom Seaver, because nothing they’ve ever done or could ever do compares with that, and the way it shattered the relationship between the team and its fans in 1977.

But it would be the dumbest thing since.

Alonso is the biggest star in New York sports that nobody talks nearly enough about, or seems to appreciate enough. He is the Polar Bear, he is the Home Run Derby guy, he is the guy who broke Judge’s rookie record for home runs the year after Judge set it. Alonso has done what he’s done in New York the same as Judge has, as a slugging first baseman that his former manager, Buck Showalter, calls “country strong.” In addition to everything else, he is the most popular player the Mets have, by a lot.

He is more important to Mets fans than the owner or his money, certainly more important than the new set of numbers guys in the front office, fronted now by David Stearns. There has been a lot of change around the Mets since Alonso made it to the big leagues. The owner had changed, the names in the front office have changed. Alonso is already working on his third Mets manager, just five years into his career.

The thing that does not change around the Mets is Alonso.

He shows up every day, and he hits home runs. In those five years in the big leagues, he has missed a grand total of 24 games. Twenty-four. In a sport that is driven by numbers and sometimes suffocated by them, it is one of the most impressive stats anywhere.

Alonso is absolutely their biggest star. And missed just eight games last season. Judge, who ran into that outfield door at Dodger Stadium in June, missed 56 for the Yankees. There was season earlier in his career when he missed 50, and another when he missed 60. Giancarlo Stanton has missed around a million since he got to Yankee Stadium. Showalter always talks about players who “post up.” He means the ones who show up. Alonso shows up. Darryl Strawberry was another homegrown slugger for the Mets once. Not like Alonso, who is a young Mike Piazza, except he has never played anywhere else.

The Mets have to make sure that Alonso doesn’t leave them the way Piazza left the Dodgers when he was young. Of course Pete is represented by Scott Boras now, an agent who has wildly misread the current free agent market in baseball. Boras has a history of letting his stars play out their contracts until free agency the way Juan Soto is doing the same thing across town right now with the Yankees. But maybe Boras ought to take a step back — without nearly falling and breaking a hip tripping over his own ego — and see how perfect a fit Alonso is for his team, for his city, for Mets fans.

And the owner of the Mets, Steve Cohen, ought to take a look at how much money it cost the Yankees not to get Judge signed long-term before he hit the 62, and they had misread HIS market, and ended up having to cough up $360 million for the simple reason that they had no choice.

“My job is pretty simple,” Alonso told me before the Mets played the Cardinals at Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium on Friday afternoon. “I go out, every single game, trying to justify my name being written into the lineup card.”

He grinned then.

“I just plan to age like fine wine,” he said, “and not milk.”

The Mets didn’t know what they had with the kid from Plant High. Nobody had any idea he would be this good. Then he hit 53 home runs as a rookie, and now he was the kind of breakout star as a kid that Dwight Gooden had been in 1984, when Gooden was still a teenager. Doc did it with fastballs. Alonso did it hitting balls out of sight. So he breaks rookie records, he breaks Mets home run records, he breaks RBI records. The Mets simply cannot risk losing him. He is as good a person as he is a teammate. As he is a Met.

“My goals haven’t changed,” he said, standing next to the batting cage, after Francisco Lindor had whooped and hollered and sounding like a cheerleader while Alonso launched balls toward the team bus. “I want to earn my stripes every game, every year. I want to be the best.”

I asked him if he is ready for the drama that this season will bring. He knew I was talking about the drama of his contract.

“I don’t look at it that way,” he said. “I look at the hard part already being over. Now I just want to do what I’ve always done, which means play and have fun.”

He was Rookie of the Year in 2019, and only finished 7th in the MVP voting, even if there wasn’t a more valuable hitter in the league that year. He has hit the 53 homers in a season. He hit 46 last year. The year before last he knocked in 131 runs. He wears No. 20. And, yeah, has missed 24 games in his big-league life.

Cohen wants his Mets to be new and different. Not if he loses Alonso, whether Cohen’s head gets turned by Soto at the end of this season or not, when Soto will be a free agent, too. Cohen grew up a Mets fan. His birthday is June 11. It means he had turned 21 four days before the Mets traded Seaver away in 1977. No one is saying Alonso is Seaver. No one the Mets have ever had is Seaver. Alonso is just the biggest star the Mets have now, and most popular. And he is theirs, at least for now. He is their Judge. The Yankees couldn’t afford to lose Judge. Cohen can’t afford to lose Pete Alonso. And can sure afford to pay him what he’s worth. Sooner rather than later. Or when it’s too late.

PAINT THE TOWN RANGERS BLUE, LEBRON IS STILL THE KING & RICHARD LEWIS WILL BE MISSED …

The Rangers are the best team in town.

It has been a long time since they were the best team in town, 10 years ago, back when they made that run to the Stanley Cup finals before losing a tough, tough series to the Los Angeles Kings.

The Knicks have fallen back lately, in what has been such an entertaining winter season at the Garden.

The Rangers, though, they just keep coming.

The Yankees fell down last year, the Mets fell down, the Jets fell down, the Giants fell down.

You can’t even find the Brooklyn Nets.

There was, of course, another time when the Rangers were the best team in town, and famously.

Another year that ended with a “4.”

That would be 1994.

When can I call off the prayer vigil for Scott Boras’ remaining unsigned clients?

LeBron had another one of those games and one of those nights this week, bringing the Lakers all the way back against the Clippers, when he clearly forgot what year it is.

Then he came back and did it again the next night against the Wizards, when the Lakers won in overtime.

And reminded everybody again that as hot a property as people still seem to think the NBA is, the league is still at its best and most compelling when he’s in the gym.

I love Steph Curry, don’t get me wrong.

And knew he we would show up the way he did at the Garden this week, in what felt like a one-night-only New York performance against the Knicks.

Curry has won as many titles as LeBron has.

It doesn’t change that LeBron, when he’s playing the way he’s been playing lately, really is still The King.

Put me down as someone who always thought that big-time college athletes always deserved to share in the riches they were bringing in for their schools, and their sports.

But the only difference between the current world of college sports and the old one we’re seeing now is that now it’s not just the schools and the networks acting like pigs.

By the way?

As soon as they take the playoffs to 12 teams, they’re already talking about 14 and if you think they’re going to stop there, send up a flare.

The transfer portal has turned college football especially into a traveling circus, and created a system where coaches don’t just have to recruit players out of high school, they have to recruit players they’ve already recruited, every single year.

Richard Lewis, who died the other day, was, to use a phrase he liked, one “amazing cat.”

He and Larry David, with whom Richard appeared in “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” were born three days apart in the same Brooklyn hospital, and were dear and lifelong friends.

Richard was a terrific stand-up comic, he was a terrific actor.

He got sober more than 30 years ago, would end up battling Parkinson’s with grace.

And was so thoroughly and completely enjoying the second — or third, or fourth — act that he got with “Curb.”

Playing a part he was born to play.

Himself.

He will be missed.

It is different for Boone, even if he had no managerial experience of any kind — if you don’t count managing from the ESPN broadcast booth — when Brian Cashman selected him to replace Joe Girardi after the 2017 for one reason more meaningful than all others:

Boone was exactly the kind of manager he was looking for to implement his — Cashman’s — vision for the Yankees, even if Girardi had taken the team to Game 7 of the American League Championship Series the year before, as close as the Yankees have come to the World Series since 2009.

Now Boone is on the line for this upcoming season as much as Cashman is, unless you still think Cashman has a job for life with Hal Steinbrenner. Boone, more than anyone, is on the line and in the line of fire if the Yankees aren’t once again a serious team come the fall.

Here is what you must understand about Boone, once a Yankee hero of the fall, and one of the good guys: His job has so often been to be a fall guy around here, just not the kind of fall guy, literally, Yankee fans want him to be. He is the guy who has to stand there and take it, day after day and game after game and season after season, even though he has never deviated from being exactly what Cashman wanted after Girardi.

“Aaron is the guy who has been asked to be a bridge from the world of analytics to the world of someone who believes that this game still has a beating heart,” Buck Showalter said. “He is someone who, because he grew up in the game and played the game, respects how hard it is. And even from the outside, you can see that his players respect him.”

Boone is about to enter his seventh season as Yankee manager, and sixth for one to be played out over 162 games. He is the first Yankee manager in history to win 100 or more games in his first two seasons. Another time he won 99. His lifetime record for the regular season is 509-361. He has done that kind of work at Yankee Stadium, done it in New York where the lights really are the brightest, and done it without ever entering October, not once, with a team regarded as the one to beat.

Cashman’s Yankees have now gone 14 seasons without winning a World Series or appearing in one. Boone has essentially been around for half of that. Maybe Cashman really might somehow survive the Yankees not being a legitimate contender by October of 2024. Maybe Steinbrenner is another owner who doesn’t know much about baseball but does not have an ability to process the kinds of numbers he gets from his famous analytics department, and will continue to ride with those numbers the way Cashman does. Perhaps Steinbrenner is still swept away by all those winning seasons in a row, as if that is now the essential part of the Yankees’ DNA.

But it is impossible to see Boone surviving if the Yankees aren’t still playing ball the last week of October. There is a club option on him for 2025. But it is also impossible to believe the Yankees will exercise it if the team once again falls down before that.

Even with the way Cashman finally started to hear it last season, Boone has been hearing it longer from Yankee fans. Cashman isn’t out front every day. Boone is. Part of the job. Now he is basically working on the same kind of one-year deal that Juan Soto is. The difference between them, other than a whole lot of money, is that Soto will have a job somewhere next season, whether it’s at the Stadium or Citi Field or somewhere else. Boone might have another job, too. Just not here. It’s why he’s worth rooting for this season as much as any of them at the Stadium.

Here is something he said last September, before showing up at spring training this time talking about being “hellbent” on winning a championship:

“I don’t worry about it. It’s out of my hands. I’m completely comfortable with who I am and the things I can control. In my mind, I’m doing everything to head into the offseason prepared to put us in a better position to try and compete for a championship. That’s what the goal is, and until they take that away, that’s my focus.”

Understand: His Yankees haven’t won the World Series. But year in and year out, he has done the job he was hired to do. He still doesn’t get nearly enough credit for his work in 2019, when the Yankees won 103 games despite Aaron Judge missing 60 games and Giancarlo Stanton missing 144 and Mike Ford playing 50 games and Cameron Maybin and Clint Frazier and Aaron Hicks combining for 600 at-bats among them.

Now he finds himself in the last year of that contract he signed after the 2021 season, club option or no. Working without a net. He needs a lot of things to go right, maybe all the way to the Canyon of Heroes. If not, he goes, all this time after he’s the one who went deep in October.

The Commanders need a quarterback. The Patriots need one, but might not draft one because they’re so far away from being relevant again. The Steelers need a quarterback. The Falcons need one. So, too, do the Raiders.

And you know who else needs a quarterback? The Giants need a quarterback, unless you’ve seen something from Daniel Jones’ complete body of work that the rest of us haven’t. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but the Giants need to make a decision about whether Jones is ever going to be a guy — or The Guy — to ever put them back on top. I grew up a Giants’ fan, and have tried to make myself believe Jones actually could be that guy. Then I saw what everybody saw last season before he was hurt, again.

Should the Giants do everything possible to move up and take whomever is left out of the big three — Williams, Daniels, Maye — after the Commanders have selected one of them? They should. Will they? Probably not. It means that they are about to invest a sixth season in Jones, whom they once took at No. 6, which is where they are again this time. It also means that MetLife Stadium, home to two famous teams with “New York” in their names, continues to be just about the most quarterback-challenged place on the planet.

We know Jones threw 24 touchdown passes as a rookie. We all saw his upside when he played the game of his life against the Vikings in the playoffs. That game got him paid, boy did it ever. But it came at the end of a season when Jones threw a grand total of 15 touchdown passes. You know who throws for at least 15 touchdown passes in the modern NFL? Just about everybody.

Jones also threw for just over 3,200 yards in 2022. You know who had the same numbers last year in the NFL? Gardner Minshew. He threw 15 touchdown passes for the Colts after he had to replace the injured Anthony Richardson. He threw for 3,300 yards. Tyrod Taylor, who stepped in for Jones last season after Jones was hurt again, threw 17 touchdown passes for the Bills back in 2016 when he was their starter, and 3,023 yards. So Taylor had the same stats that Jones had right before the Giants were willing to pay him more than $160 million for four years.

Dave Gettleman drafted Jones out of Duke because he thought he was getting another Eli Manning. Jones even looked the part. Now he has started 59 games for the Giants in his career and thrown a total of 62 touchdown passes. We always hear that the kid just never gets enough help. Well, in his money year, the one that got him paid, he sure got plenty of help from Saquon Barkley, who gained 1,312 rushing yards that year, scored 10 rushing touchdowns, and also caught 57 passes.

You do wonder how many more years Jones gets to show that he can be a marquee player on a marquee franchise, which the Giants still are. You wonder when half-a-decade becomes a full decade as they continue to justify Gettleman’s pick, and their own stubbornness not to have been wrong about Jones.

Seriously? What Giants fan out there, even the ones still loving themselves some Daniel Jones, didn’t watch Taylor last season before he got hurt, when the ball was coming out of his hand and he was extending plays and even going deep, and wonder what the Giants might have looked like if Taylor had stayed healthy once Brian Daboll had to give him the ball. Daboll even won a few games with Tommy DeVito, a career backup at best.

Now here are the Giants, once again a franchise in some trouble, after that first shining season under Joe Schoen and Daboll; in enough trouble to have people speculating what might happen if they get off to a bad start next fall. It’s why between now and the draft, Schoen and Daboll and John Mara and Steve Tisch have to ask themselves if they still see Jones as the future, or a nice kid who turned into an expensive mistake.

That is the Giants’ quarterback situation. And our Jets? They aren’t just invested in Aaron Rodgers, a quarterback who will turn 41 next December and will be coming off the torn Achilles tendon, which merely left them defenseless, and without a real backup quarterback, four offensive plays into their season.

You don’t think MetLife is the most quarterback-challenged place in all of pro football? Show me another team like the Jets that within one rather amazing three-year period were wrong with the quarterback they took third overall (Sam Darnold) and then wrong with the quarterback they took second overall (Zach Wilson). But then, why would anybody be surprised about that, especially looking at the quarterbacks they ran through MetLife between Mark Sanchez (who actually took them to two straight AFC title games) and Rodgers:

Geno Smith, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Josh McCown, Darnold, Bryce Petty, Mike Vick, Wilson, Mike White, Joe Flacco, Trevor Siemian, Tim Boyle. I may have forgotten a few others, or simply blocked them from my memory.

For now, the Jets have their guy in Rodgers. The Giants remain committed to Jones, at least for now. Could the Bears turn out to be wrong about Williams, despite what we saw from him at USC? Sure they could. Jared Goff is doing some job for the Lions now, but the Rams gave up on him, despite taking him with the first overall pick once. Carson Wentz went No. 2 behind Goff and the Eagles gave up on Wentz, and now he can’t even keep a backup job.

The Cowboys stick with Dak Prescott, who is 30 now, about to enter his 9th season, and yet to sniff a Super Bowl. You wonder if the Giants are going to be in the same boat with Jones in a few years. The Packers finally moved on from Rodgers, and happily, because they had Jordan Love waiting in the wings. You know who might be playing in the next Super Bowl? Him.

Picking the right quarterback is the day trading of sports. Ask the Giants, who thought they were going to hit big with Jones the way they did with Eli. Better yet, ask the Jets. Oh, sure. The year the Chiefs took Patrick Mahomes at No. 10, the Jets took Jamal Adams four picks ahead of him.

MEMORY OF THE MIRACLE IN LAKE PLACID LIVES ON, JALEN IS AS VALUABLE AS THEY GET & RED SOX GIVING UP …

Once more this week, 44 years later, it was a Friday night in Lake Placid, at a little Olympic arena on Main Street, when a bunch of American hockey kids coached by Herb Brooks played the most famous game any team has ever played in this country, in any sport.

I was lucky enough to be there, covering it for this newspaper.

I was there to see Michael Eruzione put one behind a backup goalie named Vladimir Myshkin with 10 minutes left in that game, straight up, and I promise you that after that it was as if those 10 minutes took 10 years to play out.

It was all ridiculously exciting, as what became known as the Miracle on Ice played out, as Brooks’ kids kept skating with what had been the best hockey team in the world — kept out-skating them really — as Jim Craig refused to let the Soviets put another puck behind him.

And then — and even though those of us in the arena wouldn’t find out until later — the great Al Michaels made the greatest sports call of them all, asking the whole world if it believed in miracles.

Later on, when it was over, and my column had been written, I walked around the streets of Lake Placid, with snow falling, the whole town like a movie set, and watched as groups of Americans stopped on street corners and outside bars and began to sing “God Bless America.”

I have been lucky enough to have a ringside seat at so many unforgettable sports moments from the time I first began writing a column for the Daily News.

Never a night like that.

I keep thinking that if I turn on my television, Tony Romo will still be walking all over Jim Nantz’s call at the end of the Super Bowl.

It’s always tons of fun for sports fans when they hear the people in charge of their team talking about a season other than the one their team is about to play.

Hey, we’re talking about you, Uncle Steve.

Tell me which player in the NBA has been more valuable to his team than Jalen Brunson has been to the Knicks.

I compared the NBA All-Star Game to flag football at the Pro Bowl the other day, and I’d like to apologize to flag football.

Compared to what we witnessed in Indianapolis last Sunday night, baseball’s All-Star Game is like church.

Just putting on pinstripes doesn’t change how badly Alex Verdugo behaved in Boston last season.

And how happy Alex Cora was to see him go.

Incidentally: The Red Sox, as an organization, now look like the biggest give-up job in all of baseball.

They’ve got an owner in John Henry who seems far more interested in his Liverpool soccer team and his investment in pro golf than he does the Sox.

Who are starting to make 2018 seem like as distant a memory as 1918 once was.

And having said all that, and with everything that went wrong in 2023 at Yankee Stadium, the Yankees have a chance to be really good this season. And maybe even great.

They might just need some luck for a change. They haven’t had a lot of that lately, the way they haven’t had enough left-handed power, enough young talent, enough starting pitching. Mostly, the Yankees need to be great again. Because if they haven’t been building towards being great this year, then when, exactly, fifteen years since they last won it all?

Aaron Boone, on the line as much as anyone this season, on the line as much as Brian Cashman should be, says the ’24 Yankees are “hellbent on being a champion.” They sure ought to be. They need to be the best team in their division again. They need to show they can be better than the Astros, if it ends up being them against the Astros again in October, in this era when the Astros have been the kind of consistent powerhouse the Yankees still seem to think they are, despite so much evidence to the contrary.

There’s a reason why the Yankees paid with young pitching the way they did to get Juan Soto, who has the chance to be an even more important acquisition here than Shohei Ohtani will be on the other coast. For sure, Soto could turn out to be the single most significant one-year rental in history, especially if the Yankees make a deep run into October. If not, Soto — as a free agent — could make a run at the most money out there, maybe even if it’s from Uncle Stevie of the Mets.

“He’s a generational talent. What he brings to the game in that box, he has such a great demeanor. the swagger, the focus. Every single pitch he’s prepared,” Aaron Judge said of Soto of the other day. “Some of those takes he has, I feel like he’s so prepared he’s reading what the pitcher is going to throw and taking the ball out of his glove… It’s impressive.”

Soto checks so many boxes for the Yankees you feel as if you could actually run out of boxes. Somehow, with a right field wall at the Stadium you feel as if you can reach out and touch if you’re standing near home plate, the Yankees had no left-handed power last season once Anthony Rizzo suffered his concussion. Now they have exactly the kind of player that they need. They have filled out Boone’s batting order beautifully, as long as Rizzo comes all the way back.

Cashman went out and got the bat he needed. You keep wondering why he doesn’t go out and get one more arm, because the Yankees need at least one more, with Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery still out there. Montgomery knows how to pitch here, even if Cashman once decided he didn’t for some reason. Snell, who’s won Cy Young Awards in both leagues? He can pitch anywhere.

Even without them, the Yankees seem prepared to move on, and in a big way, from last season. Do they need a lot to break right? They do. They need Marcus Stroman to be more than the kind of half-a-season sensation he’s been in the past. They need Judge to stay on the field, something he has done about half the time since coming to the big leagues. Please know: Over the six 162-game season Judge has played for the Yankees, he has missed a total of 192 games. Even in the 60-game COVID season, he only played 28.

They need good health from him, they need good health from Giancarlo Stanton, they need for Rizzo to be Rizzo again at first base, and at the age of 34. They need for DJ LeMahieu to at least resemble the star he was when he first got to town, and he looked like one of the best and smartest pickups Cashman had ever made. They need for Anthony Volpe to be not just a nice kid, but a tough out. And they need for El Marciano, Jasson Dominguez, to come back swinging from Tommy John surgery and look as lit as he did last season before he got hurt.

The Yankees don’t just need Carlos Rodon to be of good health — and good cheer — they need him to go back to being the pitcher on whom the Yankees lavished the same kind of money they once lavished on CC Sabathia, who so turned out to be worth it. More than anything, at least in the pitching department, they can’t have anything bad happen to Gerrit Cole, because there is no more important starting pitcher in the entire sport than he is.

Of course a lot of this is all tied up in good fortune. But not outrageous good fortune. It was bad luck for Judge to run into that outfield door at Dodger Stadium, at a time when the Yankees were starting to roll. It was bad luck in the extreme for Rizzo to basically lose a season because of a collision at first with Fernando Tatis Jr. on an innocent looking pickoff play.

Stanton says he’s slimmed down because he wants to be a “baseball player again.” More than anything, the Yankees want to be the Yankees again. A lot has to go right this season for that to happen. The Yankees are due for things to break right. Can they win the East again? Hell, yeah.

So we don’t know what they can do when the season starts up again. Or what they can be. But if they do get healthy, if they get Julius Randle back sooner rather than later and Mitchell Robinson really can come back before the season is over, this is what they have shown even before we see how things are going to look with Randle and OG Anunoby and Bojan Bogdanovic on the court together:

They are as good as anybody in the conference behind the Celtics.

And maybe, just maybe, the real dream in the spring in our city is a major basketball event out of the past, which means a big playoff series between the Knicks and the Celtics, the way it used to be when the great Dave DeBusschere would say, “Just throw the f–king money on the table, we’ll be there.”

Again and again: This is all predicated on Tom Thibodeau getting his players back, meaning the ones he started the season with and the ones he picked up along the way. We saw what a difference-maker Anunoby was on the wing when the Knicks got him from Toronto. And soon, if the basketball gods are friendly, we will see how the Knicks roll when OG and Bogdanovic really are on the court together, and Randle is back to being the physical presence he has been since he got to town.

Most of all, we will see how Jalen Brunson makes it all work. Whatever puncher’s chance the Knicks are going to have the rest of the way, whatever they can be if and when they are healthy again, starts with him.

He is the best and most complete point guard the Knicks have had since Clyde. He is as important to this Knicks team as Steph Curry is to the Warriors. He has made himself as important as any Knick since Patrick Ewing, and that includes what Carmelo Anthony did and what he gave the Knicks a decade ago, when the Knicks won 54 games and the Atlantic Division.

This Knicks team is a much better team than that one was, just off what we saw in January, and that means even with Robinson already gone for awhile; before OG and Bogdanovic and Alec Burks got here; after Randle got hurt. You have to keep talking about health, because that is going to be the whole ballgame the rest of the way. But if they do get healthy and whole, this has the chance to be the best basketball time at the Garden since the Knicks made their run from No. 8 all the way to the NBA Finals a quarter-of-a-century ago.

The only team in the Eastern Conference that has been demonstrably better than the Knicks so far this season is the Celtics, who have been better than everybody. The Bucks, even after a coaching change, are still a mess. Joel Embiid is hurt again for the Sixers, and no one knows when he is going to play again. The Cavaliers have been terrific so far, and they are the ones currently holding down No. 2 in the conference, but what Knicks fan who saw the Knicks beat the Cavs in the first round last season would bet against their team doing it again?

The Knicks had won 15 of 18 before everybody started going down, and now they have predictably dropped down in the standings, or they would be the ones right there behind the Celtics. And understand: Nobody in your sport ever throws you a pity party when your main guys get hurt. It happens to everybody. Now it has been happening to the Knicks. It doesn’t change the run they had made before falling back and falling down.

You know why the Knicks made such a fuss after that bad call against the Rockets the other night, and acted as if it was the first and only call like it in the history of the NBA? It wasn’t just because the refs admitted they were wrong afterward. It was because the Knicks needed the game. And might need it down the road when the seedings in the East get locked in place. The Knicks fully understand what the possibilities are for them  once the sides really are again even. If they can get even before things continue to get worse in the standings.

It would be a shame if it happened that way, for this particular group. There have been other fine moments for Thibodeau’s Knicks since he got to town. They shocked everybody and got to No. 4 in the conference in the 2020-21 season. A year ago, they gave the Heat all they could have wanted in the playoffs before it truly was Brunson against the world in Game 6.

But then came January 2024. Then came the New Year. They played 16 games in January and won 14 and the two they lost, to the Mavericks and the Magic, were each by four points. Suddenly the rest of the league was paying attention to what was happening at the Garden again. And with each win, it became more and more clear that Jalen Brunson had become the biggest sports star in town.

Maybe that will change once we get a look at Juan Soto at Yankee Stadium. Maybe it will change when Aaron Judge and Pete Alonso start hitting home runs. Maybe it would have been different if Dr. Rodgers had played for the Jets this season. But he didn’t play. He got hurt and then he just talked and talked and talked. The great spotlight of the city kept finding Brunson and he kept playing his game, and suddenly the Knicks were the biggest game in town. At which point things got really loud, and not just at the Garden.

He has finally been recognized as an All-Star. He is more than that here, of course. He is a star of the city now, a star point guard in a place where point guards have always been revered. Patrick was great once. He and Latrell Sprewell and Allan Houston and Marcus Camby made their run in ’99. The Knicks of Carmelo and Jason Kidd had that one shining season. But all they did in the end was win a single playoff round.

That’s all these Knicks did last year. That was then. This is now. These Knicks are capable of doing more. Much more. If they can get healthy.

STILL THINKING ABOUT SUPER MAHOMES, KYLE FIRING THE WRONG GUY IN SAN FRAN & CAITLIN’S MOMENT …

It is a week since Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs did what they did in Super Bowl LVIII.

And you know how it always goes in sports, how quickly the caravan moves on.

But it’s all right if we linger a bit more on what we saw last Sunday night in Las Vegas, because it was such a surpassing moment for Mahomes’ sport and any sport.

This was one of the great players of all time — and someone who might someday be called the greatest of all time —  playing at the height of his immense talent and the height of his game with the biggest prize in his sport on the line.

This was Mahomes doing it in the Game 7 Michael Jordan never got to play for the Bulls.

This was LeBron doing it in a Game 7 against the Warriors one time, after he had gone back to Cleveland.

This was Tiger Woods five years ago, remembering who he was when he was young and winning another Masters, and his 15th major championship.

Ernie Accorsi always said that the ultimate crucible for a quarterback was whether or not he could take his team down the field with a championship on the line.

And last Sunday night in Vegas, Mahomes didn’t just do it once, he did it twice.

Once at the end of regulation, when he had to take his team down the field and at least get a field goal or lose the game and his season.

Then he did it again at the end of overtime, when he was 8-for-8 and ran for a first down on fourth-and-one, before finally throwing it to Mecole Hardman in the right flat for everything. Mahomes himself made it clear he didn’t do it alone.

Chris Jones played the game of his life, the way Justin Tuck and Michael Strahan once did when the Giants knocked off the 18-0 Patriots in Super Bowl XLII.

Travis Kelce caught nine balls.

Andy Reid and Steve Spagnuolo, Reid’s defensive coordinator, were brilliant all game long.

But the headliner for Super Bowl LVIII, the way he is the headliner in American sports right now, was Patrick Mahomes.

The NBA All-Star Game has turned into flag football at the Pro Bowl.

So, wait: Kyle Shanahan is firing his defensive coordinator but keeping the analytics guys who told him to take the ball?

Got it.

I wish Caitlin Clark’s season was just beginning.

Hers isn’t just a story for this time in women’s basketball.

It is one of the best basketball stories of all time.

Caitlinsanity, is what it is.

This was a celebration of sports in Kansas City, another time when we saw another big American city turned into a small town, hundreds of thousands of people in the streets because players like Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce and Chris Jones had brought them out and brought them together and made them feel as if they were all in it together. Sports was doing that again, until the shooting started again near Union Station.

This was what it was like in 2013 when two brothers blew up at the finish line at the Boston Marathon and people died, in the middle of what is always such a joyful celebration of sports in that city, a holiday of sports, really. Then five years later, on this same date, Feb. 14, there was the mass shooting in Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

And this was once again the country of guns, right before we once again heard about all the thoughts and prayers from the cowards in our government who continue to tell us that guns aren’t the problem, even as more blood is routinely shed because of them. This always goes back to the wisdom of the great Pete Hamill, who always used to wonder how many home runs Babe Ruth would have hit without a bat.

So this time the story for the Kansas City Chiefs that began Sunday night when Mahomes threw the winning pass in overtime in the Super Bowl ended with the real soundtrack of America, which is gunfire. What had been the happiest day in the history of Kansas City ended with nearly a dozen children being treated at Children’s Mercy Hospital. According to the reports out of that city, at least one other victim was treated at St. Luke’s Hospital.

Mahomes would later post this on X:

“Praying for Kansas City.”

It is a lovely thought. But we are past the point in this country where prayers can do much when someone points another gun at innocent people. I was in Parkland six years ago after the shooting there, walking the streets and seeing the makeshift memorials, and then going home to listen to all the phony rhetoric from our politicians about how this time things were going to change.

Only things didn’t change after Parkland the way they didn’t change after all those children and those teachers were gunned down by Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook Elementary. This is a country lousy with guns, made lousier by politicians who won’t do anything about them, as they continue to genuflect in front of a Second Amendment crafted in a time of muskets and militias.

They shot up a Super Bowl parade on Wednesday. They shot up an elementary school in Connecticut. They shot up a high school in Florida. They shoot up nightclubs in Orlando and nearly seven years ago, a gunman shot up a music festival in Las Vegas, where the Super Bowl was just played, and when the shooting stopped that time, 58 people were dead.

It was 17 dead at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas six years exactly before guns were going off in Kansas City. Anthony Rizzo of the Yankees attended that high school, and came back after the shooting to attend a vigil there. Here is something he said at the time, in a voice I remember being powerful and fragile and eloquent:

“There are a lot of communities out there that know exactly what we’re going through right now and have to relive those moments again and again. While I don’t have all the answers, I know that something has to change before this is visited on another community and another community and another community.”

Another community this time was Kansas City, Mo., on a sun-splashed February day. In the shadow of what happened almost as soon as the speeches ended, the mayor of Kansas City, Quinton Lucas, issued a statement, one that included this phrase:

“This is absolutely a tragedy, the likes of which we never would have expected in Kansas City.”

But in this country, at this time, why wouldn’t he expect a tragedy like this to finally come to his town?

Why would anybody be surprised that it just happened again, six years to the day after Parkland?

The only difference this time is that it felt like somebody opened fire on the Super Bowl.

Mahomes proved once again at Allegiant Stadium why he is the biggest star we have in American sports right now. Not LeBron. Not Steph. Not even Taylor Swift. Him.

Sometimes the story in sports is exactly what it is supposed to be. With no disrespect to a gallant 49ers team, the main storyline of Super Bowl coming into the game was Mahomes, and that is exactly what it was at the end of regulation and then at the end of overtime. The difference in the game was him.

With all that Travis Kelce does and all that Andy Reid does and all that Steve Spagnuolo, an even better coordinator than Bill Belichick was, does with his defense, the difference in pro football right now is Mahomes. The Chiefs have him and nobody else does.

“Give that man the crown,” Travis Kelce said when it was over, on this night when Mahomes and the Chiefs were playing against history as much as they were playing against the 49ers.

Tom Brady has won more Super Bowls. So, too, did Joe Montana, who played in four and won them all and threw 11 touchdown passes in those games without an interception. Terry Bradshaw won four. Troy Aikman won three. Mahomes, throwing and running and then running and throwing, is better at playing the position, doing all the athletic things and quarterback things to win the game, is better at amazing than all of of them.

He was asked after the Chiefs had finally won 25-22, after he had thrown the overtime pass to Mecole Hardman that finally won it about getting the ball after the Niners had kicked a field goal on their first overtime possession, about what he was thinking before the last Chiefs drive of their remarkable season:

“I had all the belief in the world that we were going to go down the field and win the game.”

And the Chiefs did.

When it was fourth-and-one, which meant fourth-and-the-season on that last drive, of course it was his own number called on an option play, and of course he ran for the first down that kept the drive and the season going. Kyle Shanahan made a mistake taking the ball first in overtime for a few reasons, and one of them was that it automatically turned Super Bowl 58 into a four-down game for the Chiefs. Mahomes made them pay. There would be another third-down conversion later.

Finally it was a three-yard pass to Hardman with three seconds left in the first overtime period, and the Chiefs had won this Super Bowl by three. Again: Three Super Bowls for Mahomes. Three Super Bowl MVP’s, after a night when he threw for 333 yards.

They called the pass to Hardman a walk-off score. In Vegas, it was like walking away from the table with all the money. And another Lombardi Trophy. Once again, the Chiefs had come from 10 points behind to win a Super Bowl. They have done it to the 49ers twice. They did it to the Eagles last season.

“We can make it easier sometimes,” Mahomes said. “But what’s the fun in that?”

Kelce, who caught nine balls from Mahomes in this game, was asked what the conversation was like at halftime after the 49ers had pushed the Chiefs around, held them to a field goal, really should have been ahead by more than 10-3.

“All we did was circle the wagons,” Kelce said.

There would be brilliant, daring work from the Chiefs’ defense in the second half, because brilliant and daring is what Spagnuolo’s players do. When the Chiefs needed to hold the 49ers to a field goal in overtime, Spagnuolo sent everybody except Taylor Swift after Brock Purdy on third-and-four and made him miss. But there was even more brilliance and more daring from the quarterback, on his way to 34 completions and two touchdown passes and, in addition to all that, 66 rushing yards.

Jalen Hurts had more rushing yards in the last Super Bowl than Mahomes had in Allegiant Stadium. Hurts had 70 against the Chiefs. But until Sunday night, no Super Bowl quarterback had ever thrown for more than 325 and rushed for more than 50.

This was not just his moment. This was his defining moment. Or moments, plural. He took the Chiefs 64 yards on 11 plays to tie the game at the end of regulation, on a Harrison Butker field goal. Also with three seconds left, in this game when the Chiefs were like Steph Curry raining down three’s on the 49ers. Then, when it was 22-19 49ers, it was the 75-yard drive that won the Super Bowl for the Chiefs. On a night when Mahomes completed at least two passes to eight different receivers, he was 8-for-8 on that drive in overtime, with all the money truly on the table.

“The conversation at halftime was let’s just go back to being us,” Mahomes said.

After that, it was all about Mahomes being Mahomes. Johnny Unitas once took the Colts down the field in overtime to beat the Giants in a championship game, a game that made pro football a big deal in this country. Brady did it overtime against the Falcons. Eli Manning did it to Brady’s Patriots on night in Glendale, Ariz. Montana did it that time against the Bengals in Miami. There have been others.

Mahomes did it twice on Sunday night. Kelce said these Chiefs had reached another tier by winning their third Super Bowl, and second in a row. So, too, did Patrick Mahomes. Give that man the crown.

That’s always the big game in this country, never bigger than this year. Oh sure. The Super Bowl has never felt bigger than it does with this one, and that means even for the coaches.

The stakes are always tremendous on the night when the country goes to a pro football game. They just seem even higher this year, and not just because of the marriage — relax, not that kind of marriage — between Taylor Swift and the NFL, all because of her relationship with Travis Kelce.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that we will get a game for the ages in Vegas, as much as we hope we will. But just on our way into Super Bowl LVIII, we have as many good storylines as we’ve ever had on Super Sunday.

It all starts with two storied franchises. One, the 49ers, has appeared in seven Super Bowls already and won five. The Chiefs are about to play in their sixth, have won three, are trying to become the first team in 20 years to win two in a row.

The Chiefs have Patrick Mahomes, now the best player of this time in pro football, with his sights firmly set on someday being called the greatest of all time. He’s the biggest and most visible sports star going in American sports, and Kelce, because of his own greatness as a player and because of Swift, is right behind him.

And you know the 49ers have stars of their own, starting with Christian McCaffrey, whose father once won a Super Bowl with the old 49ers, and quarterback Brock Purdy, once the last player selected in the NFL Draft, trying to write one of the best Cinderella stories in the history of his sport if the 49ers can knock off Mahomes and Kelce and Taylor Swift and the Chiefs.

There is something else, though, adding salt to this game, not that it needs much more, because the stakes really are as high for the coaches as they are for any of the players who will run out on the field a little after 3:30 p.m. local time and feel, as the old Giants GM Ernie Accorsi likes to say, as if they’ve once again arrived on another planet.

You better believe we’ve got Mahomes and Purdy and Kelce and George Kittle and the defense of a legendary coordinator named Steve Spagnuolo against the 49ers offense. We’ve got McCaffrey, as valuable a player as there was this season, and Nick Bosa and Deebo Samuel, ready to fully introduce himself to the country.

But you better believe we’ve got Andy Reid vs. Kyle Shanahan for a second time, this matchup between them feeling even more compelling than the first one, when Mahomes finally brought the Chiefs back from 10 down in the fourth quarter to win.

Reid, at 65, if his Chiefs can win again, will cement his own legacy as one of the best to ever work an NFL sideline. If the Chiefs do win, he will have won his third Super Bowl in his fifth appearance in the big game, and join the small list of coaches who have won at least three Super Bowls:

Bill Belichick (6).

Chuck Noll (4).

Bill Walsh (3).

Joe Gibbs (3).

If Reid does get another Lombardi Trophy, he then moves himself up from the coaches who have won two Super Bowls: Vince Lombardi, Don Shula, Bill Parcells, Jimmy Johnson, Shanahan’s dad Mike, Tom Flores, Tom Coughlin, who got his two off Belichick. Reid has already shown he can stand the test of time. But it is not just Mahomes playing against history in Super Bowl as much as he is playing against a 49ers team trying to put that franchise in an exalted place with a sixth Super Bowl win, which would tie the Niners with the Patriots and Steelers. Reid is doing the same thing, as he continues to write one of the best second acts any coach ever has.

He and Mahomes aren’t Belichick and Tom Brady yet. But if they get another one in Vegas, you have to say they sure might be trending in that direction.

So, Reid needs this game, as he does try to make his own history. So, too, does Kyle Shanahan, looking to finally put his own points on the board in the big game, and to certify his own bona fides as one of the top guys, in what is still such a fine first act for him. But he was the offensive coordinator for the Falcons when they blew a 28-3 lead to the Patriots in Super Bowl LI. If you remember the game, you know: It wasn’t just the Falcons defense falling down in the second half, there were some costly mistakes with play-calling.

Then there was the first Chiefs-49ers Super Bowl, four years ago in Miami, when the 49ers watched the Chiefs finish the game on a 21-0 run. Reid won his first Super Bowl that night, having lost one in the past with the Eagles when they went up against Belichick and Brady. Shanahan did not. Reid had Mahomes in Miami. Shanahan did not. He had Jimmy Garoppolo.

Shanahan was asked the other day about the possibility that his team will fall short again. Here’s what he said:

“I deal with it the same way if we win,” Shanahan said. “I celebrate with our team. I celebrate with my family and I move on with the rest of my life, which is being a father or son and coaching and working and doing all that. Narrative, good or bad, is just a narrative … I just don’t want regrets.”

It was Parcells who famously said that when a game looks even, bet the team that needs it more. This game looks even, even if the 49ers were established as a slight favorite. But that notion goes out the window when it is the biggest game. And yet: When you look at just the coaching matchup, it is fair to say that Shanahan is the one who does need this game more, just because he doesn’t want to walk away with regrets again.

Once it was Reid who was called the best coach out there who hadn’t won it all, until he started all this winning in Kansas City. Now Shanahan will get tagged that way if his 49ers go to 0-2 against Reid and the Chiefs.

This game does have so many good plotlines, so much history, so much star power. The coaches are very much a part of it, too. Stakes are as high for them as everybody else in a town of big winners and big losers. Just makes the big game feel even better.

FINALLY SOME TOUGH TALK FROM WOODY, KNICKS JUST NEED TO STAY HEALTHY & IT’S ALSO A BIG GAME FOR ROMO …

Where was all this tough talk from Woody Johnson when he was telling the world that he was bringing back Robert Saleh and Joe Douglas because he liked the culture around the Jets now?

This is the way my buddy Pete the Jets Fan put it when he read the comments Johnson made in Vegas about Douglas and Saleh and even Zach Wilson:

“He announced before kickoff Christmas Eve that his leadership team would return. The team won two of its final three games with Trevor Siemian at QB, with one of those games Bill Belichick’s finale in Foxborough. Now the owner wants everyone to know how mad he was over those last couple of weeks. OK Woodrow, got it.”

All the good the Knicks have done this season, all the goodwill they just generated by making that trade for Bojan Bogdanovich and Alec Burks, aren’t going to amount to a hill of beans in the spring if their best players keep getting hurt.

That prosecutor Robert (MAGA Ben) Hur who had so much editorializing to do about President Biden’s age and memory this week?

Let’s put Hur under oath and see how many times he says “I can’t recall.”

Or, as I saw somebody suggest on X the other day, ask him how many of his passwords he can remember without checking.

Hur is the kind of hump who probably makes camels jealous.

Steph Curry is starting to look an awful lot like, oh, Steph Curry lately, isn’t he?

This is another NBA moment when you wonder if Postseason James Harden is going resemble Regular Season Harden.

Because that’s always the question, isn’t it, when Harden arrives in your town?

It is fitting that LIV golf was in Las Vegas this week, because they know all about lounge acts in Vegas.

You know who also has some pretty serious stakes with Super Bowl LVIII?

Tony Romo.

Who’s no longer the hot kid in the booth.

If Carlos Rodon hadn’t pitched like a tomato can last season after signing that contract for $160 million, I believe Blake Snell would already be a Yankee by now.

Say it again:

If Joe Mauer is a Hall of Famer, so is Donald Arthur Mattingly.

The idea that Aaron Boone is under the gun this season but that Brian Cashman isn’t is as funny as “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

Incidentally?

If you watched the first episode of the new season of “Curb,” you know that Larry David and them are already at the top of their game.

There is no better show in college basketball, men’s or women’s, than Iowa’s Caitlin Clark.

My friend Rick Reilly is right.

She’s Pistol Pete with a ponytail.

Raise a hand if you think LeBron has one more move left in him.

And I don’t mean to the basket.

Hold on.

I think Taylor Swift’s plane is about to land in Vegas.

They became a much better basketball team when they signed Jalen Brunson, the best point guard they’ve had since Clyde, as a free agent away from the Mavericks. They got even better when they lengthened their wings and really lengthened their team by trading for OG Anunoby (who will miss at least the next 3 weeks after undergoing elbow surgery). Everybody can see how they’ve looked and how they’ve played since that trade, even after Julius Randle and Anunoby got hurt.

But now Leon Rose makes this kind of move at the trade deadline for the kind of player, Bogdanovic, who is exactly this in a season when he’s averaging 20 a game, even at the age of 34:

Someone who can be the third-best player on a contending team.

It is what the Knicks are when they are whole again: They are a contender again. Rose is signaling to the rest of the league that he believes he has the horses to make a run. His team was sitting right there at No. 4 in their conference when he made this trade, two games behind the Cavaliers in the loss column, whom they beat in the playoffs last year, and tied with the Bucks, and who knows what the Bucks are going to look like in the spring.

At the same time the Knicks are six games behind the Celtics, which means six behind the best record in the league. Even with this trade, the Knicks still don’t have the horses the Celtics do, especially if old friend Kristaps Porzingis remains healthy. But when was the last time the Knicks looked at first place in the Eastern Conference and didn’t feel as if it were as distant a sight from 33rd St. as Yankee Stadium?

The Knicks have made big moves before. They made one for Carmelo Anthony once, another February, 13 years ago. But they were a 28-26 team when they made that trade with the Nuggets, and even though they would win 54 games a couple of years later. No one thought they would make a run in that 2010-11 season.

No. This move at least has a chance to be as big as the one for Latrell Sprewell turned out to be 25 years ago, one that changed everything for the Knicks of 1998-99 despite the fact that they would end up finishing No. 8 in the East. No one knew when the trade happened, but Sprewell becoming a Knick was the beginning of one of the most exciting rides the Knicks have ever had, one that included knocking off the No. 1 Heat and going all the way to the NBA Finals.

Do Bojan and Burks mean that is going to happen again?

It would be silly to game this out that far, with this much season left, and not knowing when Randle is going to be back, because no one is sure about that, whatever smiley-faces the Knicks are putting on his recovery. But Heat Culture isn’t doing much good for Pat Riley so far this season. Joel Embiid just had knee surgery, and will be evaluated in a month, and then we’ll see where he is and where the Sixers are.

You know where the Knicks are going to be in a couple of weeks, though? Playing the Celtics at the Garden, at which point the Knicks that have been reimagined since the start of the season get a chance to see how they match up against the best team in the league. For that one night, and maybe more nights like it the rest of the way, Knicks vs. Celtics might feel like a fair fight again.

The Knicks aren’t the only team that gets better at the deadline, of course. The Sixers make it clear that they’re not throwing in the towel by making a trade for Buddy Hield. Still: In the early afternoon of the trade deadline, the biggest noise came from the Knicks.

There was a feeling around the league that the Sixers might try to get Bogdanovic away from the Pistons. The Knicks got him instead. As their sport moves up on what always feels like its traditional halfway point, despite the number of games that have been played, the Knicks officially make their fans believe that their own season is just starting.

No one knew back in February of ’99 where the combination of Sprewell and Allan Houston in the same backcourt would take the Knicks. Everybody sure found out in the spring, as the Knicks were on their way back to the Finals for the first time since ‘94. Here’s what Knicks GM Ernie Grunfeld said at the time of the Sprewell trade:

“Sprewell is an explosive offensive player. He’s a fierce competitor. I think he’s committed to winning.”

Bogdanovich isn’t the explosive player Sprewell was. Few the Knicks have ever had played with that kind of fire. But Sprewell had averaged 21 points a game in the five full seasons before the Knicks got him. Bogdanovich has averaged 18. He’s one of those guys whose real position is basketball player.

The Knicks took their own position on Thursday: They don’t want to be stuck in the middle any longer. Seriously.