This was the game for which they’d been searching all season, the kind of 48-minute statement that declared in clear, concise, unmistakable language:

Yes.

We belong.

We are for real.

How good a night was it at the Garden, this 128-115 thrashing of the Spurs? The Knicks played frantic, helter-skelter basketball all night, they got after the Spurs for 94 feet at a sprinter’s pace, and they turned the ball over six times.

“Six times,” rookie Landry Fields marveled. “That tells you something right there.”

How good a night was it? After losing Danilo Gallinari for a couple of weeks with a bum knee, with their delicately calibrated lineup suddenly reliant on a heavy dose of improv, the Knicks managed to shoot 55 percent from the field, managed to out-rebound the Spurs, and in a game that wasn’t exactly defined by defense, never allowed the Spurs the game-turning spurt they kept waiting for.

“Every time they came after us,” Raymond Felton said, “we had an answer.”

How good a night was it?

With three minutes still left in the game, with his team only trailing by 10, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich cleared his bench, conceding he was going to see a fifth loss of the season before a 30th win, choosing to save some bullets for Boston tonight, recognizing that the Knicks — who’ve spent the better part of three weeks stubbornly stalking the NBA’s most fearsome prey — had finally bagged a pelt for themselves.

Maybe the biggest one of all.

“They played their [butts] off,” Popovich said. “And they were hungrier than we were.”

As the Garden roared, as the Knicks put the final touches on this win that stands instantly as the finest of the Mike D’Antoni Era — if not the entire new century — the people tried to let their voices spill out of the arena and into the streets. It was that kind of night. No need to stop shouting at 0:00. No need to turn silent once they hit Eighth Avenue, once they hit 33rd Street.

Not as long as they’d waited for a game like this. For a night like this.

Across the past three weeks, the Knicks had battled the Celtics to the buzzer and beyond, they’d tried to stand toe-to-toe against the Heat a couple of times, tried to measure up to the Magic, tried to make people listen that they were more than just a compiler of gift victories against the NBA dregs.

“We’d been starting slow,” D’Antoni lamented, “and coming up short.”

And against elite of the league, that is a deadly formula. But this was different. The Knicks had 36 after a quarter, 72 at the half, 101 heading into the fourth. Time and again the Spurs came after them, cutting nine-point leads to one, erasing eight-point leads to zero, seemingly toying with the Knicks, with 19,763 people buzzing, uncertain whether to believe.

Time and again, Amar’e Stoudemire (28 points, nine rebounds) would drain a jumper. Time and again Wilson Chandler (31 points on 13-for-19 shooting) would slice through the Spurs’ defense, or knock down a 3. Time and again Felton (seven assists, zero turnovers) would neutralize Tony Parker, and time and again Fields would do what he does best: find ways, large and little, to make winning plays.

“I honestly feel we can match up against the best teams in the league,” Stoudemire insisted, and before last night that was a wonderful sentiment and nothing more.

Now, it’s something more. Now, it’s something real. The Spurs came to the Garden a league best 29-4. They leave 29-5. And know it wasn’t a fluke. They were good. The Knicks were better. The Knicks made them exit the Garden under a white flag, and who saw that coming?

“The Knicks are a very good basketball team; they are not a dangerous team, they’re a good team and there’s a big difference,” Popovich said. “The way they were playing by then, the chances of us winning weren’t good.”

They head west now, still thin, still carrying a razor-thin margin for error, but armed with a night, with a win, that should nourish them, and sustain them, all the way to Phoenix. And beyond.

michael.vaccaro@nypost.com



