Over the decades, no matter how dreadful the New York Knicks were on the court, they still had that court. Madison Square Garden.Nobody in the NBA could touch it.For too long, a rite of basketball passage in the big city went like this:Superstar from another team declares his unconditional love for the Garden.Superstar from another team torches the Knicks in what he’ll refer to as “the Mecca of basketball.”Superstar from another team says how much he enjoyed the league’s answer to a Broadway theater and praises the theatergoers’ detailed knowledge of the game.Often saddled with a team lacking serious championship ambitions, New Yorkers paid good money to see Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Steph Curry.“Those people there really know their basketball,” Jordan once said. “You always want to perform at your highest level when you play in the Garden.”LeBron once put it this way: “It doesn’t get better, man, than to be playing in the Garden in front of these fans.”Which brings us to this year’s Knicks, who need two more victories over the San Antonio Spurs to win their first title since 1973. They are currently playing art-form basketball, the kind worthy of their stage.So, New Yorkers are not paying those wild and crazy prices for Monday night’s Game 3 of the NBA Finals to see the league’s latest monster talent, Victor Wembanyama.The Knicks are the main attraction, at last, back in the finals for the first time since 1999. They have played for 80 years with only two banners to show for it, but nobody cares about that right now. The Knicks have made history by winning 13 consecutive postseason games. They are playing the game the way it was meant to be played, sharing the ball and the credit. It’s been beautiful to watch.This is what their fans have been waiting for, through all the seasons defined by misguided personnel decisions and painful endings. The entire region has responded with affection. Even those old enough to have witnessed the Yankees winning seven World Series rings, the Giants winning four Super Bowls, and the Rangers winning a drought-busting Stanley Cup say they have never seen such unanimous support for a contending New York team.Game 3 promises to be an epic sporting event, maybe the most hyped at the Garden since Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier met in 1971 for the first of their three clashes, “The Fight of the Century.” The scheduled arrival of Donald Trump means that a sitting U.S. president will attend a finals game for the first time, and that the necessary security protocols will wipe out those viral watch-party celebrations outside the arena.That’s OK. The main watch party will go down inside the building. “I think it’s going to be through the roof,” said Spurs rookie Dylan Harper, a local via Rutgers and Don Bosco Prep in northern New Jersey. “I think it’s going to be everything that I’ve dreamed of times 10.”Along with Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns and Wemby, the Garden will stand tall among the night’s main characters. It’s the lighting, the public address voice of Mike Walczewski, the sound of the horn, and, of course, the sight of A-list celebrities surrounding the floor.“It makes it feel different than almost any other building you’ve been in,” Mike Brown said. When the first-year Knicks coach came out for his first Garden game, he said to himself, “Holy crap. I can’t believe this is where I’m going to be coaching.”The Garden elevates every act it books — games, concerts, dog shows, you name it — and you don’t need to be from the tri-state area to understand why. Devin Vassell attended high school in Georgia and college in Florida and plays for a team based in San Antonio, and after mentioning at Sunday practice session in the city that it’s a blessing to be playing in the finals, he added, “As a young kid, it’s something that you dream of, especially playing here in Madison Square Garden.”Not many iconic old cathedrals remain in sports, as most have been sacrificed at the altar of corporate greed. So the Garden has been dearly missed in the finals.Last time around, in ’99, the Knicks returned from San Antonio facing a 2-0 series deficit that seemed insurmountable with Patrick Ewing out and Larry Johnson hobbled. (They lost in five.) In the Knicks’ only other appearance in the finals since the ’73 title, they took a 3-2 lead over the Houston Rockets while half the home crowd was watching, along with the rest of America, as police chased that white Bronco carrying O.J. Simpson.It was a surreal night to be a part of – a fan, who might have been drinking, even snuck into the back of a postgame news conference to ask then-Knicks coach Pat Riley a question about Simpson’s failure to deke this way or that to evade capture. “Is that a writer?” Riley asked incredulously as security grabbed the fan.That was the last time the Knicks won in the Garden with a legit chance to win it all, and a distracted crowd couldn’t fully enjoy it. Thirty-two years later, that won’t be a problem. At all.There is no distracting this 2026 crowd from anything, not with the Knicks playing the best postseason basketball in franchise history, while being led by a captain the equal of Willis Reed.“I felt the amount of love I’ve gotten from this fan base and from this city since day one,” Brunson said Sunday at the Garden. “I think it’s grown over the years, but I’m so thankful. I’m so honored to be able to put ‘New York’ across my chest.“Wouldn’t trade that feeling for anything in the world.”Millions of Brunson fans would second that notion. Imagine being the leader of such a connected and inspired team.Imagine walking out there Monday night in the Garden knowing that your Knicks are a bigger attraction than the storied arena that houses them.