At what point is it OK to believe? At what point can you trust your eyes, which are beginning to make some bold proclamations if you let them? How bold? Here’s another question for you: When’s the last time you saw the Knicks string together 16 quarters like the ones they’ve put together across these past four games? Can you even remember?

This time it was 137-98. This time it wasn’t the not-ready-for-primetime Hawks but the holy-cow-we-just-beat-the-damned-Celtics 76ers, who were on every bit as slick a roll coming into this game as the Knicks were. And Philly hadn’t just won three straight; it did it with the looming anvil of elimination over their heads.

And were run out of the gym.

Joel Embiid walked off the court midway through the third quarter, looking like Roberto Durán the night he muttered “No mas” at Sugar Ray Leonard in the New Orleans Superdome. The rest of the 76ers followed him under the flag of surrender. The last 12 minutes were entirely — how did Marv used to put it? — “gar-BAAGE time.”