Knicks need to prove their worth as No. 2 seed with deeper run than last year’s playoffs

They get a few days to rest some weary muscles, to catch their breath and, most important, to learn the identity of their first-round opponent. For the Knicks, this is a respite well-earned and just as much a part of the perks of finishing with the second seed in the East as earning Game 7 at home in the first round — and the second, if they make it that far.

Those six words, of course, will be backburnered by anyone with any kind of affinity with or allegiance to the Knicks right now. There has already been a feisty debate about whether they’d have been smarter to start playing games with basketball fate once they knew they’d clinched no worse than the three seed Sunday afternoon.

(If you read this column Monday — and if so, at the top, thank you! — you know I think they did the right thing, opponent be damned.)

We actually have some evidence from around these parts that white-flagging it — which in this case would’ve meant conceding Game 82 to Chicago, ceding the No. 2 seed to Milwaukee and falling into a 3-6 duel with Indiana — can be a hazardous game.

Back in 2014, the Nets were so spooked at the prospect of playing the Bulls — who a year earlier, without Derrick Rose, had stunned them in what remains one of the top-shelf coaching jobs in Tom Thibodeau’s career — that they gave a half-effort against the Knicks in Game 81 and did a full tank job in Game 82.

The immediate dividends worked out: The Nets beat the Raptors, whom they preferred to play, in a Game 7 in Toronto. But it turned out the Bulls would have been the easier draw (they got smoked by the Wizards in five) and the bigger point was that the Knicks drew the Heat in the second round instead of the Pacers.