It was just a series split on paper.

Two wins for the Yankees. Two for the Rays, including an 8-7 victory Sunday in The Bronx.

It didn’t alter the AL East standings like a sweep would have. The Yankees still are in fourth place — half a game out of the cellar, eight games back from the Rays — and won’t close any gaps with the two-steps-forward, two-steps-back approach.

But compared to other games in the 42-contest sample, these four against the Rays felt a bit different for the Yankees (23-19).

Their lineup had a bit of juice. Not the juice that has served as the base for the powerful Bronx Bombers concoction of years past, but a different type that might be more sustainable for this edition.

Yes, Aaron Judge found his swing again after an injured list stint, hitting two homers Saturday and falling a few feet short of a game-tying blast in the ninth inning Sunday.

Yes, Anthony Rizzo launched three homers, providing a glimpse of the game-altering bat the Yankees traded for in 2021.

But to scrape by with the rest of their order — missing Giancarlo Stanton and Josh Donaldson, not to mention pitchers Luis Severino, Carlos Rodon, Frankie Montas and Jonathan Loáisiga — against a historically hot Rays squad, it turned this four-day stretch into a potential turning point.

“I think we’re in a good spot,” Judge said Sunday. “There were some battles back and forth. We don’t want to come in here and split the series, but they’re one of the best teams in baseball and we battled back and forth. I think this team’s coming out of here with a lot of positive stuff.”

It could turn into a meaningless footnote, too. The Yankees could just be flat-out mediocre, and the early-season trajectory toward their first missed postseason since 2017 could be legit, especially in a highly competitive division.

It’s already different from 2022, when they built a massive early cushion and crawled toward the end clinging to the AL East title.

This time, it looks as if the Yankees will need every last game.

On May 15 last year, the Yankees were in the middle of a stretch during which they won 24 of 29 games. When that stretch ended with three consecutive losses, the Yankees ripped off another 20 wins in 23 games. They were 49-16.

They were last year’s version of the Rays. They couldn’t do anything wrong. They were the juggernaut. Red flags were shoved aside as the wins kept stringing together. Look what happened to them.

It’s different for the Yankees in 2023. They struggled again to begin the year (5-5 in 2022), but then that mediocre play continued for a month.

Series splits — mathematically — mean it’s still continuing, but it also means that a draw at Yankee Stadium against the Rays can be celebrated as progress. They didn’t gain ground in the standings, but they didn’t lose any, either.

The series started with a dud Thursday, when Drew Rasmussen silenced the lineup for seven innings.

But Rizzo capped the next night with two homers, including a two-run blast in the eighth inning that gave the Yankees the lead for good. It was the vintage Rizzo night that the Yankees have been waiting for, just the third multi-homer game of his Yankees career.

The first one was on April 26, 2022 against the then-doormat Orioles, when they were still at the bottom of the standings. The other one came earlier this year against the Twins, when the Yankees were crushed 11-2.

Definitely not the same environment as Friday night.

Another positive emerged Saturday, when the Yankees erased a 6-0 lead against Rays ace Shane McClanahan. Yes, Nestor Cortes struggled — his ERA rose to 5.53; after eight starts last year, it was 1.80 — and created that six-run deficit, but the fact the Yankees could overcome that was encouraging.

“That’s what this team’s made of,” Judge said Sunday. “We did that a lot last year, had some big comeback victories, and then this year’s even no different. We’re never out of any ballgame, no matter what the score is.”

But there were other contributions. Anthony Volpe converted a bunt single to spark a key sixth inning, and he has three homers in his past five games. They needed that from the 22-year-old rookie.

Ian Hamilton, who didn’t pitch Sunday, emerged as a pleasant surprise out of the bullpen. They needed that from the 27-year-old.

Oswaldo Cabrera even recorded hits in his first three at-bats from the No. 9 spot Sunday, including a two-run homer and a two-out single. The Yankees needed every base from that burst, too.

There’s still a long way to go for this Yankees lineup. It might not even lead to anything.

But the last four days were a start in the right direction. The Yankees, for once this year, flashed some potential that they could hang with the league’s best.

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The Knicks now have expectations. Tom Thibodeau now has expectations.

Reasonable or not, they have a floor for where future seasons should reach at a bare minimum, and as long as enough of their core — from Jalen Brunson and Julius Randle to RJ Barrett and potential free agent Josh Hart — remains intact, that won’t change.

Anything short of reaching the Eastern Conference Finals in 2023-24 will indicate a lack of progress. Anything less than a playoff appearance would fall incredibly short.

So after the Knicks’ 96-92 loss to the Heat on Friday in Game 6, they entered an offseason defined by the franchise’s transition into new territory of demands and expectations. A combination of this season’s success, Brunson’s rise and their stockpile of young players and draft assets have prompted that shift. They’ll need to shop for a star-type upgrade, too.

And with those expectations come consequences, as the Suns’ Monty Williams and the Bucks’ Mike Budenholzer — the two head coaches in the 2021 Finals — discovered when both were fired despite winning a playoff round and a league-best 58 regular-season games, respectively.

Williams had the best two-year winning percentage in Suns history, according to ESPN. He was the franchise’s first coach to engineer consecutive seasons with at least a .700 winning percentage. He earned the NBA’s Coach of the Year award in 2022.

Three of the past four Coach of the Year winners — Williams, Budenholzer and the Raptors’ Nick Nurse — have been fired across the past three weeks. The lone exception? Thibodeau, who won the award in 2021.

The coaching landscape has changed, and it’s not just in the NBA. In the NFL, Nathaniel Hackett and Lovie Smith didn’t survive one year on the job, and rumors also swirled around the Raiders’ Josh McDaniels. The Premier League’s 2022-23 season has set a record for managers fired in a campaign with 14, per Sporting News — there are just 20 teams! — to shatter the previous record of 10.

That’s not to say Thibodeau’s job is on the line if the Knicks fall short of their new standard. But there was a span earlier in the 2022-23 season, when the Knicks were a .500 team and just making the playoffs seemed iffy, when Thibodeau’s future as head coach appeared uncertain.

There was a spell during the 2021-22 season, when the Knicks were a sputtering team in February, where Thibodeau’s status was in question and The Post’s Marc Berman wrote a column advising against making a move.

The Knicks didn’t fire him. Thibodeau stayed, got Brunson and added Hart mid-season. They made the playoffs, and won there six times.

And that, for better or for worse, changed everything.

For all of the NBA title aspirations tossed around when there was a Big 3 in Brooklyn, none of the Nets’ tumultuous trio — nor the Nets themselves — even made it to the conference finals in 2023.

James Harden, the last one standing, lost with his 76ers in Game 7 on Sunday, getting blown out in embarrassing fashion by the Celtics. Ben Simmons appeared to enjoy watching that, judging by his Instagram story.

Kevin Durant and the Suns were eliminated by the Nuggets on Thursday, some time around the second quarter of Game 6.

Kyrie Irving didn’t even make the playoffs with the Mavericks.

All three, who had strategically descended in Brooklyn, were supposed to depart for better situations, for a better chance at claiming a title than with the chaos unfolding at Barclays Center.

But at the end of their respective seasons, which team, or which individual player, finished in a better spot?

The answer might be the Nets. The answer might be head coach Jacque Vaughn, general manager Sean Marks, focal point Mikal Bridges and their replenished store of draft picks.

It’s likely not the Suns, who will have a new coach and lots of questions about the roster past a 35-year-old Durant and Devin Booker.

It’s likely not the Mavericks, either, given that Irving — who is set to become a free agent, again — and Luka Doncic never seemed to get on the same page.

Harden and the 76ers could be spiraling, too, and the organization’s steps following their blown 3-2 series lead will emerge as a prominent storyline.

The Nets didn’t lose any ground on the Big 3 by failing to win a title this season. If anything, they might have gained an advantage.