GIVING THANKS

Grateful N.Y. sports are interesting again

M AYBE I’m just getting a little sentimental in my old age. Maybe it’s because I look out the window and what I see — sharp sunshine, long shadows, orange and brown colors scattered across the back yard — yells “Thanksgiving” to me.

Whatever it is, I am in an especially thankful mood.

And it goes beyond the fact that in a few hours, Kristaps Porzingis will be on my television set again. I’ve been laid up for a few weeks, old guy issues, so the Knicks have become as close to appointment television as I have (well, along with bingewatching “Fargo” and “The Americans” and “Sports Night,” and rewatching “West Wing” and “Cheers” in bunches, and just about anything that comes on the American Heroes Channel).

But Porzingis and the Knicks are at or near the top of the things I find myself especially grateful for. Forget the fact that I have the great privilege to write about basketball in these pages periodically; I’m an unreformed old gym rat, a guy who still dreams about playing (though in those dreams I’m always six inches taller and 60 pounds lighter), who still believes there’s a coach lying dormant inside my soul (just ask all the coaches I’ve fired in these pages periodically).

So yes, I’ll start here: I am thankful that the Knicks won those backtoback games in Orlando and Atlanta last spring, costing them a few extra pingpong balls in the lottery, allowing them to drop to No. 4. I am thankful Phil Jackson kept the pick, and that he leaned on his basketball gut (and his closest adviser, Clarence Gaines Jr.), and that Porzingis has started his career this way, and that the Knicks have started this season this way. They are interesting as hell again. They are fun to watch again. No. I can’t thank them enough for that.

I am thankful Sandy Alderson did what he did at the end of July, and that the Mets gave us an October, and that for as long as there are archives and microfilm I will be on the record questioning if he had the stomach to do all of that, and for as long as those archives and microfilm are around it will state for the record that I was wrong. I don’t like being wrong, but I don’t mind admitting when I am. I’m thankful for that, too.

I’m thankful I was wrong about Tom Coughlin and Terry Collins, too. At different times in my time scribbling for these pages I’ve called for their jobs, and their bosses didn’t listen to me, and the result was two Super Bowls for the Giants and a pennant for the Mets. I’m even more thankful that both men are pros, that both have shrugged and said, “I’ve been fired by better than you,” and both have provided help to this columnist with their wisdom and their wit.

I’m thankful I was right about Joe Girardi, who has done that rarest thing in professional sports three years running: overachieved with the New York Yankees.

I’m thankful that Chris Mullin is working the sidelines at St. John’s, because some things are just sup posed to be. I’m thankful I saw the last three games the Islanders ever played at Nassau Coliseum last year, because it was important to hear that old barn rollick with energy and possibility a few more times. And I’m thankful for the Rangers being as good as they are, because there are no fans who take the daily ups and downs of a season more closer to heart than Rangers fans do.

I’m thankful for the bosses here at The Post’s sports section, because they bleed a little bit every day to make this section what it is. I’m thankful for the teammates I work with here, because they make the gig even more fun than it’s supposed to be, which is more fun than the law allows.

This year, I must say, I am especially grateful to Dr. Edward Nieuwenhuis, whose skillful hand worked wonders on my foot; in gratitude I pledge to try to write more kindly of his third cousin, Kirk, who made Mets fans awfully thankful when he took Stephen Strasburg deep one unforgettable night in early September.

And, as always, I am thankful for you, who reads, who sometimes rages, who often writes, a dialogue that sustains me every day of the year. Happy Thanksgiving, whether you prefer turkey or duck, Giants or Jets, stuffing or dressing, Yankees or Mets, pumpkin pie or

pecan.