This is all you want, isn’t it? This is the goal. This is the dream. There was so little else to talk about the past nine days, so Knicks fans who wanted to talk about the Knicks instead spent a lot of time talking about two teams other than the Knicks: the Cavaliers and the Pistons.

As in: Who do you want?

And look: In most cases, in most years, with most teams, this would be an understandable debate. Would you rather play the offensively explosive Cavs or the defensively stout Pistons? Would you prefer the Cavs and their four mainstays who have been selected to All-Star teams, or Cade Cunningham, who received two first-place votes for MVP and sure looked the part an awful lot in continually rescuing the point-starved Pistons?

But this was different, because this is the truth: