In the meantime, people have wondered why Jackson wouldn’t want an unemployed coach with documented experience, like a Mark Jackson or a Jeff Van Gundy, both of whom have New York roots to go along with their fine yakking-on-television skills. Both would bring winning records, more certainty and obviously, more marketability.

Remember when Isiah Thomas hired the native New Yorker Larry Brown in 2005? That, too, was a great hometown story until it crashed and burned in a war of competing egos and agendas. And that turn of events is just a microcosm of Knicks history in the years since the dissolution of their only championship teams in 1970 and 1973.

For decades, the Garden has been mismatching executives, coaches and players based on the bolder headline, the sexy sell, while careening from one plan to another. When Sonny Werblin was the Garden president in the early 1980s, he forced a headstrong coach, Hubie Brown, on a wary general manager, Dave DeBusschere. When Al Bianchi was hired as the general manager some years later, he was whisked off to Providence to sign the myopically ambitious Rick Pitino.

Even Jackson’s beloved mentor, Red Holzman, was part of the standard Garden infighting into the early 1980s with the longtime general manager Eddie Donovan, who conspired to replace him with Willis Reed in 1977.

As the coach in New York, Riley got along with the Knicks’ president at the time, Dave Checketts, until he didn’t. Ditto Jeff Van Gundy and Ernie Grunfeld. Donnie Walsh handpicked Mike D’Antoni as his coach, and their rebuilding process was proceeding with promise until the owner decided he had always wanted to engineer a big, complicated trade and mangled the Carmelo Anthony deal with Denver.

Whatever the odds that Jackson will maintain his freedom in the chase for something as lasting as it is exciting, he deserves the benefit of the doubt, the right to try to create the most harmonious work environment possible in a place like the Garden. He wants what Riley has: the view from above, with the faith that hell won’t break loose, or freeze over, when he opts for some R & R back home in Los Angeles.

Earlier this season, Spoelstra did what the true disciple does and paid homage to the organization in general but to one man in particular.