The weirdest thing about the Knicks losing to the Pacers in last year’s playoffs was how simple the experience was emotionally. Usually when the Knicks are eliminated, there’s a white water rapids of feelings and vibes to navigate. If you were there in 1993 and 1994, there will always be a little blood in your mouth. 2004 left a bad taste behind. We don’t talk about ‘97. But one way or the other, every playoff run’s ending left me surfing some emotional wake. Except last year.

Last year the Knicks were just so beat up and banged up by the end, there was no longer a competitive frame of reference by which to measure them. Bodies were dropping like the team had the plague. How emotionally invested could I be in a basketball team that didn’t have the tools to do what was asked of it?

Which brings us to today’s Knicks, specifically last night’s Knicks, who completed a dismal season series against Los Angeles’ version of the Nets, earlier this month losing to the Clippers in Miles McBride’s first game starting in place of Jalen Brunson, a rough trick of a night for Deuce, then falling again last night without Brunson and McBride before losing Cam Payne to a right ankle sprain. How far down the depth chart we getting here? Might I point out Emmanuel Mudiay only just turned 29?

For what it’s worth, the Knicks have lost three of five, stumbling as they near the regular-season finish line, though I’m not sure how many NBA teams off the top of my head I can remember flourishing down three point guards. I wrote “for what it’s worth” because the value of this L is still undefined. The Bucks and Pacers both lost, too, reducing the Knicks’ magic number to clinch finishing ahead of them to seven and five.

What am I supposed to feel?

Am I upset New York lost a game that turned when the point-guard-ravaged Knicks were left defending James Harden with Landry Shamet and rarely seen rookie Tyler Kolek? That would be silly. Am I bothered they failed to put more distance between themselves and Indiana and Milwaukee? What’d be the point with the odds still so far in their favor? The Knicks and Pacers combined have 20 game results left this season. The Knicks need seven to go their way to clinch third. They’re still in the driver’s seat.

I’m profanely tired of the injuries piling up, which takes me back to the numbness I felt last spring watching the Knicks suffer daily casualties. Back then the numbness was more painful, more like frostbite numbness, a killer cold that hides a brutal, burning pain. Since their dip in form has neither cost them anything of consequence nor even threatened to, the numbness now is more like getting numb before an injection or surgical procedure; a means to an end, an indignity worth enduring. If Jalen Brunson is back and balling by game one, round one, these dog day nights of Shamet finishing -29 in 19 minutes will be remembered as the good kind of numb.

Kolek played 19 minutes, tying the career-high he set the night before. Delon Wright played 12, his most as a Knick. Those are, hopefully, temporary measures. They do take me back to last year’s playoffs, though. Remember Alec Burks not playing a minute the first eight playoff games, then averaging nearly 20 points a game the final five against Indiana? By the end of that series the Knick injury situation was tragicomic. After traveling to Milwaukee Friday, the Knicks return home to face Portland and Philadelphia. Win those three games and they pro’ly sew up the third-seed — if’n that pleases you. I’m not sure it does me.

Normally, dropping from a season-long stranglehold on one seed to the spot below it would feel like a failing of sorts. But my hope for the Knicks this season is to take a new step forward. I think that’s more likely to happen against Cleveland in the second round than Boston. The Celtics would be ideal for the Knicks in the to-be-the-best-you-gotta-beat-the-best manner. It’s often forgotten now, but the ‘90s Knicks were born from that bed: in ‘92, Pat Riley’s first year here, New York was in first place virtually wire-to-wire, before stumbling and watching a white-hot Celtic team pass them at the end to win the division. That knocked the Knicks from second to fourth and meant a second-round series against Michael Jordan and the Bulls, the series where the longest continuous run of great Knick basketball ever began.

Maybe facing the Celtics this year teaches them something invaluable, something they’re better learning sooner than later. I’d rather try my luck against the Cavs. Then again, the way the middle of the conference is taking shape, looking ahead might be too cute by half. The Pistons just passed the Bucks for fifth. I’d rather play Cleveland than Boston in round two, but I’d also rather play the fast-fading Bucks than the fast-climbing Pistons in round one.

Quoth Jaybugkit: “Damn. Be okay Payne.” For real. This late-season Knick injury bug schtick is some stale-ass shit. Two years ago it was Julius Randle. Last year at this time Randle was out again, followed in time by Mitchell Robinson, Bojan Bogdanovic, OG Anunoby and Jalen Brunson. Now all three point guards are out. Their next opponent, the Bucks, announced earlier they’ll be without Damian Lillard indefinitely due to blood clots in his leg. They also played last night without Giannis Antetokounmpo, who missed their loss in Denver with a foot sprain. Imagine being a Bucks fan right now. I may be numb waiting for the injuries to stop and the playoffs to start, but Milwaukee reminds us there are worse things to be feeling. Or not feeling.