ORLANDO, Fla. — The Knicks didn’t necessarily need the reminder of just how fragile a good thing can be in the NBA, and they certainly didn’t want this firsthand account of just how brittle the delicate tapestry of a season can be. But that’s what they’ve gotten. That’s what they take into the All-Star break.

Tom Thibodeau didn’t ask your humble one-legged columnist if he could give him 10 solid minutes Wednesday night for the Knicks’ game with the Magic if the 10-day contract paperwork could get faxed to the Kia Center on time. But he sure seemed like he might be on the verge of it.

And, relative to the rest of the roster, your humble one-legged columnist was in reasonably good health.

“You take what the season gives you,” he said.

It’s surreal to recall how it has gotten to this. Just eight days earlier the Knicks had moved a season-high 15 games over .500, hammering the Grizzlies 123-113 and extending a scalding-hot stretch of 15 wins in 18 games. Two days later, they completed a deal to add Alec Burks and Bojan Bogdanovic. They had passed the 76ers, caught the Bucks, were a few percentage points behind the Cavs for No. 2 in the East.

Now, a week later, they are a team more in need of the coming eight-day All-Star sabbatical than just about any team has ever been. Donte DiVincenzo and Bogdanovic joined the swollen pile of inactives in front of the Magic game, and the Knicks had only nine healthy bodies ready to go, including two G-League call-ups.

3

The good news: all six of the boldfaced names missing Wednesday night will be expected back in the days and weeks after the All-Star Game, and Jalen Brunson (ankle) and Josh Hart (knee) will also be able to tend to aches and pains.

The bad news: while you would hope that they’ll be able to pick up where they left off, both collectively and individually … well, there’s no guarantee of that. And there’s no guarantee something else isn’t lurking between here and the start of the playoffs. That’s the trick in the NBA, after all. Nobody may want to say it out loud, but everyone knows it.

3

Hell, all the Knicks need to do to see how tenuously tied together good fortune in pro basketball really is look across town at the Nets. Because of how grisly it all ended in Brooklyn for their erstwhile Big 3, it’s become too easy to forget just how close they really came to fulfilling all of their lofty ambitions three years ago.

Former NBA journeyman Justin Jackson was on the “Run Your Race” podcast Tuesday. He was a member of the 2021 Bucks, who squared up with the Nets in the Eastern Conference semifinals.

“If James Harden and Kyrie Irving don’t get hurt, they low-key sweep us,” Jackson told co-host AJ Richardson. “They beat us by 40 the first two games in Brooklyn [actually it was 12 in Game 1 and 39 in Game 2]. It was so bad I had my car shipped back home when I got home from Brooklyn because I wanted my car there when I get back after these next two games.

“It was that bad. There was nothing we could do. And then injuries happen, period. James got hurt the first game and they still beat us by 40 in the second game, that’s what’s crazy about it.

“Then we go to Brooklyn and it looked like they were still in charge of the series. Then Ky rolled his ankle its like we actually might have a chance now. We went to Game 7 and if [Kevin Durant’s] shoe was one size smaller we lose it. So you can say woulda, coulda, shoulda but if that team was healthy they were winning the whole thing, I don’t care what anybody says.”

3

Jackson offered a money-shot quote that ought to send chills up the back of the Knicks, the 76ers and every other team for which this presently applies — and for teams presently rolling like the Celtics, whose June expectations could also easily go sideways if someone’s knee or ankle bends a way it’s not supposed to.

“Sports happen,” he said. “Injuries happen.”

As Brad Hamilton told Spicoli and his crew in “Fast Times”: “Learn it. Know it. Live it.”