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The Knicks can feel satisfaction about the season later. There’s a whole summer for that. There are four months between now and training camp, and at some point there will be distance and space from this final game, this final chapter, and the Knicks can maybe toast a season in which so much good happened.
But that’s for then.
For now, this will aggravate most of the Knicks, agitate them, because it should aggravate and agitate most of them, the ones who played in a do-or-die game Friday night at Kaseya Center and turned in the kind of performances that keep you up at night.
Pity, too. If even one other Knick had played with the attitude — and aptitude — of Jalen Brunson, there would be a basketball game at Madison Square Garden on Monday night. There would have been at least 48 more minutes of basketball season, and as long as you still have season left you still have hope left.
There will be no game Monday night. The Heat eked out a 96-92 win, sweeping all three in Miami and advancing to the Eastern Conference finals, four games to two. The Garden will stay dark Monday night, and for the rest of the summer. No more hockey. No more hoops.
No more hope.
“The difference between winning and losing a playoff game,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said, maybe 20 minutes after the final buzzer was joined by the joyous growl of 19,737 Heat fans, “is very, very small.”
Brunson, no surprise, was the one Knick who honored the gravity of the moment, who one final time allowed Knicks fans to dream of bigger things and better days.
