This has to be the year, doesn’t it?

The last time the Knicks made the NBA Finals was 1999, when their current star point guard was two years old and his dad was an end-of-the-bench reserve who played a total of 10 seconds for the team in that series, a 4-1 wipeout at the hands of the heavily favored San Antonio Spurs. (That was, not coincidentally, the year Jim Dolan took control of the team.) The ’99 Finals run was a bit of a fluke — it was a strike-shortened season in which the Knicks slipped in as a No. 8 seed before going on a charmed, if disjointed, playoff run — and the franchise hasn’t been particularly close to repeating the feat since, reaching the conference finals only twice, including last year’s loss to the Pacers. Frankly, the Knicks have been mostly miserable in the 27 years that followed: mismanaged, overpaid and downright dispiriting. For the vast majority of my adult life, it has been actively stupid to be a Knicks fan.

But all of us fans kept watching. The Garden remained full every night. The bing still bonged. All with the hope that it might someday be better than … that. Someday, they might even return to those NBA Finals.

And suddenly, magnificently, it looks like all that waiting may just pay off. Maybe it won’t mean an NBA title just yet, but it sure looks like the Finals drought is close to ending. Or at least it better be.

After their 137–98 obliteration of the Philadelphia 76ers in game one of the Eastern Conference semifinals on Monday night, which was their fourth straight blowout playoff victory, the Knicks have never looked closer to the place they’ve been so desperate to return. Following a season of stops and starts, of controversy, of........

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