Mike Lupica: Jalen Brunson’s Knicks earned No. 2 seed and this playoff opportunity vs. Joel Embiid, 76ers

It really comes down to this for Knicks fans, starting on Saturday night, a big, loud basketball night out of the past when the Knicks will feel like the only game in town, Joel Embiid and the 76ers coming to town for what will feel like a lot more than just the start of just another first-round series:

Those fans will be looking for some Jalensanity.

They will be looking for that, and for the start of the playoffs to look like the end of the regular season, when the Knicks stepped on it the way they did and ended up with the second seed in the Eastern Conference, and the 2 vs. 7 matchup in the first round. Now we see that the 7 they have rolled is Embiid and the Sixers, and not going another round, something else out of the past, with the Heat.

You know how long the idea of Embiid somehow ending up in a Knicks uniform has been a part of the narrative in basketball New York, just because he was supposed to be the kind of superstar MVP guy the Knicks needed to get them to where they wanted to go at this time of year. Only now the Knicks, and their fans, have the (growing) belief that this team, even without Julius Randle, can at least make it back to the Eastern Conference finals for the first time since 2000.

And the biggest reason for that belief is Jalen Brunson, child of the Garden, now that the Knicks have somebody of their own playing exactly like a superstar now. It is Brunson, whose father played here, the 6-2 guard out of Villanova by way of the Dallas Mavericks who has turned out to be so much more of a player — so much more important, period — than the Knicks could have ever expected him to be.

Everybody saw, and not just in New York, that he has just concluded one of the most dazzling regular seasons that any Knick has ever had. We showed you the stats the other day in the Sunday Daily News: Other than the season 40 years ago when Bernard King averaged a tick under 33 points per game, Brunson is right there and right now with any scoring season a Knick has ever had, all the way through Patrick Ewing and back to Richie Guerin.

He scored 40 or more points 11 times. He scored 40 or more in consecutive games. He put 61 on the Spurs. Say it again: There isn’t a player in the league who has been more valuable than Brunson has been to this Knicks team, not Nikola Jokic or Luka Doncic or even Embiid when he is healthy, and making the Sixers look like a powerhouse. It is why Brunson being snubbed by Team USA, at least for now, and possibly cheated out of a trip to Paris for the Olympics, is so plain stupid. Seriously, who really picked the guys on this aging team, LeBron and Kevin Durant?

None of that matters on Saturday night. What matters is that in the season the Knicks are playing, Brunson and his teammates have to go through Embiid, with whom the Sixers are 31-8 this season. They are a force and he is a force when he’s healthy. The problem for his team is that he didn’t look healthy against the Heat, occasionally looking as if he were moving underwater as he made his way up and down the court.

Brunson, though, is very much at full strength, despite having had to carry the Knicks for months. The guy who played his college ball in Philly, will now go up against a terrific Philly guard named Tyrese Maxey, the kid who will be such a dangerous wing man for Embiid in this Knicks-76ers series. It was not so long ago, remember, that you could have a reasonable debate about whether you thought Brunson or Maxey was the better guard, and might not be called crazy if you picked Maxey.

Listen: There is no more dangerous first-round opponent for the Knicks than the Sixers, even with Embiid looking diminished. But this is the game and the series we get, and the Knicks get. The will be home in the Garden on Saturday night because they beat the Bulls in overtime last Sunday afternoon and because the Sixers came back in the second half to beat the Heat in that play-in game on Wednesday night, no matter how gassed Embiid looked at the end.

The Knicks get after them now with all the orange-and-(Villanova) blue they have thrown at the Eastern Conference regular season. Even without Randle, they try to play in April the way they did in February, when they were balling as well as the Celtics or anybody else once the trade was made for OG Anunoby. They weren’t supposed to get the No. 2 seed without Randle. They did. They weren’t supposed to win 50. They did. Now here they are.

“I think [the Knicks] are for real,” 76ers coach Nick Nurse said after the play-in game. “I think they earned that seed.”

They did. Their fans saw it all year long, when the Knicks had all their players and when they did not. So much of their appeal really has made this feel like Linsanity, just for a lot longer than a couple of weeks. They’ve been that good and that tough and that much fun. The Sixers didn’t have Embiid, their best player, for half the season. The Knicks lost Randle, their second-best player, for good in January.

New season. Old times at the Garden.