Knicks are using the Celtics’ blueprint against them

On one level, it’s hard to shake this part of it from your mind. Think about how many times you and your best friends from college talked at the tail ends of after-hours parties about putting enough scratch together a few years after graduation to maybe, someday soon, rent a house down the Jersey shore or out in the Hamptons for a week.

Did that ever happen for you? Did life get in the way? Life usually gets in the way.

Well, Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, Donte DiVincenzo and Mikal Bridges just got their Shore house. It’s a little different than the blueprints you may have had in mind those 4:30 a.m. days. Instead of loud music and free-flowing kegs and midnight swims in their future, there’s an endless string of sweaty basketball practices and four-games-in-six nights road trips. But then, we all have different versions of paradise, right?

So yes, in a sports world where we seem constantly besieged by how this player wants this coach fired and these teammates aren’t on speaking terms and Player X is furious at the contract Player Y just signed … enjoy this. We’ve already seen how much Brunson, Hart and DiVincenzo enjoy playing with each other. It was obvious how much Bridges pined to get back in the band, and every response so far has been genuine. This is rare stuff.

And, of course, will not mean a thing if we wake up some morning next winter and the Knicks are 23-25. That’s the reminder. That’s the thing that forces you to fold up the feel-good part of this whole thing and tuck it in your pocket. Leon Rose didn’t make this trade so “Roommates” could get more downloads. He did it because he thinks this narrows the gap with the Celtics.

And here’s the best part of it: It does.