KNEE INJURY LIKELY ENDS ROSE’S KNICK DAYS

YOU CAN’T coach effort.

That was the resounding and unified message from the two head coaches patrolling the sidelines Sunday afternoon at the Garden — the Knicks’ Jeff Hornacek and Celtics’ Brad Stevens. The responses, however, came from two very different places.

Boston entered Sunday with the best record in the Eastern Conference, a feat achieved through hard work, continuity and intensity. New York entered Sunday with the sixth-worst record in the NBA, a sorry circumstance brought about by underperformance and, most importantly, a failure to commit on the defensive end, especially from its best players and leaders, Carmelo Anthony, Derrick Rose and Kristaps Porzingis.

There is a disparity in effort between the Celtics and Knicks. And according to Hornacek and Stevens, that difference can be attributed to the players.

“I can tell you it’s not coaching,” Stevens said Sunday before the Celtics’ 110-94 victory over the Knicks. “You’re not going to have a roster full of 15 guys that don’t play hard and think you’re going to be able to convince them to play hard for 82 games. I think that you recruit hard-playing guys. “If you’re a hard-playing guy, and you’re around other hard-playing guys, then that’s contagious. And certainly there are instances where maybe a guy hasn’t played as hard, but when he gets around the Marcus Smarts of the world and people like that, there’s a contagiousness. And I think that when you play in Boston, it’s one of the responsibilities that comes with being a Celtic. And so we’ve talked quite a bit about that. But there’s no, like, motivational speech to get guys to play hard. They’re either going to play hard or not.”

Stevens’ roster is loaded with players who take responsibility and pride on defense. He mentioned Smart, the Celtics’ pugnacious and feisty combo guard. But Jae Crowder, Al Horford, Jaylen Brown, Amir Johnson and others provide similar defensive work ethic.

The Knicks, meanwhile, have few if any of those types of players — consistent defenders. Before Sunday’s game, Hornacek used Ron Baker and Lance Thomas as examples of hard-working players who show up on defense on a nightly basis. But the list ends there. “I can think of all the teams that I played on, and you have those certain guys that just do it. Coaches don’t necessarily have to get on you about doing that. That’s an internal pride thing,” Hornacek said of playing hard. “When you have two, three, four of those guys, then all of a sudden guys see that success and then they do it. So we’re trying to get that with some of our guys. …We have guys that do it at times. But we’ve got to get them to do it for all 48 minutes every night.”

Hornacek admires what Stevens has accomplished in his four years in Boston and hopes to garner similar success in New York. “They play hard every single night,” Hornacek said of the Celtics. “And when you do that, then you win games.”