This team has what it takes

A healthy Knicks — led by Brunson — capable of being a real threat this spring

NEW YORK — We don’t know what the Knicks can do over the second half of the year simply because we don’t know when they are going to be whole.

It seems now that everybody except Mike Breen and Walt Frazier got hurt as the Knicks limped into the All-star Break, and we all saw what happened after they lit up January the way they did, were well on their way to No. 2 in the Eastern Conference.

So we don’t know what they can do when the season starts up again.

Or what they can be.

But if they do get healthy, if they get Julius Randle back sooner rather than later and Mitchell Robinson really can come back before the season is over, this is what they have shown even before we see how things are going to look with Randle and OG Anunoby and Bojan Bogdanovic on the court together:

They are as good as anybody in the conference behind the Celtics.

And maybe, just maybe, the real dream in the spring in our city is a major basketball event out of the past, which means a big playoff series between the Knicks and the Celtics, the way it used to be when the great Dave Debusschere would say, “Just throw the money on the table, we’ll be there.”

Again and again: This is all predicated on Tom Thibodeau getting his players back, meaning the ones he started the season with and the ones he picked up along the way.

We saw what a difference-maker Anunoby was on the wing when the Knicks got him from Toronto.

And soon, if the basketball gods are friendly, we will see how the Knicks roll when OG and Bogdanovic really are on the court together, and Randle is back to being the physical presence he has been since he got to town.

Most of all, we will see how Jalen Brunson makes it all work. Whatever puncher’s chance the Knicks are going to have the rest of the way, whatever they can be if and when they are healthy again, starts with him.

He is the best and most complete point guard the Knicks have had since Clyde. He is as important to this Knicks team as Steph Curry is to the Warriors. He has made himself as important as any Knick since Patrick Ewing, and that includes what Carmelo Anthony did and what he gave the Knicks a decade ago, when the Knicks won 54 games and the Atlantic Division.

This Knicks team is a much better team than that one was, just off what we saw in January, and that means even with Robinson already gone for awhile; before OG and Bogdanovic and Alec Burks got here; after Randle got hurt. You have to keep talking about health, because that is going to be the whole ballgame the rest of the way.

But if they do get healthy and whole, this has the chance to be the best basketball time at the Garden since the Knicks made their run from No. 8 all the way to the NBA Finals a quarter-of-acentury ago.

The only team in the Eastern Conference that has been demonstrably better than the Knicks so far this season is the Celtics, who have been better than everybody.

The Bucks, even after a coaching change, are still a mess.

Joel Embiid is hurt again for the Sixers, and no one knows when he is going to play again.

The Cavaliers have been terrific so far, and they are the ones currently holding down No. 2 in the conference, but what Knicks fan who saw the Knicks beat the Cavs in the first round last season would bet against their team doing it again?