The dream is to provide a living, breathing, sporting example in the tradition of the ballad of Sir Andrew Barton:

“I am hurt, but I am not slain;
I’ll lay me down and bleed a-while,
And then I’ll rise and fight again …”

Specifically, the dream is for the Knicks to channel the 1969 Knicks, or the 1979 Islanders, or the 1985 Giants, or the 1995 Yankees. To learn from the agony of a full, but disappointing season. To lick wounds during the offseason, look to make the next steps that can make a good roster one that can walk with the sport’s elite.

It isn’t easy. It’s far from a guarantee. For all of the above examples, there are a vast array of teams that seemed prepared to pounce and simply never did. The Knicks can learn from their own sordid history, how 54 wins in 2012-13 wound up being an apex and not a launching pad. Same with entire Knicks decade of the 1990s. The Rex Ryan Jets of 2009-10, as well as the Bill Parcells Jets of 1998 and the Richard Todd Jets of 1982, were others that came close but never took the final leap. Add the 2006 Mets. Add the 2017 Yankees. Add the 2022 Rangers.

It can really go either way. Still …

We can start with the 1969 Knicks who, in so many ways, were a forefather to the current team. They were good, they’d already begun to succeed under Red Holzman, made a culture-assisting trade just before Christmas for Dave DeBusschere, then entered the playoffs running, sweeping the favorited Bullets. Then they ran into the aging, but still proud Celtics, surrendered home court early and could never catch up, thanks in large part to a hobbled Clyde Frazier.

The next year, virtually the exact same cast took the final step, and all along the ride they cited that heartbreaking failure against the Celtics as something around which they’d rallied.

Speaking of playoff heartbreak, few have ever compared to what the Islanders endured in 1979, when they won the Presidents’ Trophy and then were tossed out of the playoffs by the underdog Rangers. Those Islanders had been knocking on the door for years and had to do two things to take the final step: get one more “glue guy,” and shake the label of chronic playoff chokers. When they got Butch Goring late the next season, that helped solidify that instead of baggers, the core of that group would instead be remembered as a dynasty.

One of the problematic issues for these Knicks is the knowledge that as good as they were this year there are still built-in impediments in Milwaukee and Boston and Philly — and, well, Miami — that look maybe a little too formidable. But the 1985 Giants — with many of the key elements already in place for what they’d do the next year — went into Soldier Field in the second round of the playoffs and looked like they belonged anywhere in the world but on the same field with those Bears.

The Giants not only recovered from that shattering 21-0 stomping, but they also grew exponentially because of it. And only a year later, they were the 17-2 behemoth of the sport.

Ten years later, the Yankees, after limping through what seemed sure to be a 14th straight year out of the playoffs, caught fire and took a rollicking 2-0 lead on the Mariners in the 1995 ALDS before running out of fuel — and wins — in three games in Seattle. So devastating was the Game 5 loss that there was weeping in the Yankees clubhouse, which is a lot more rare in pro sports than you want to believe.

And yet a year later, the Yankees took their first tour up the Canyon of Heroes in 18 years. It helped to add two future first-ballot Hall of Famers to the regular mix, Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, as well as a borderline candidate in Andy Pettitte. But by the time Charlie Hayes squeezed the final out in 1996, another dynasty had been hatched out of the dust and the disappointment of heartbreak. It can happen. It has happened.

Vac Whacks

You know who was rooting most fervently that the Knicks would win and keep winning all the way to the middle of June? The men who play for the Mets and the Yankees, that’s who. They’re all about to run out of hiding places.

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Week after week, “Somebody Somewhere” keeps getting better and better and funnier and funnier. “Succession” gets all the props over at HBO, and rightfully. But Bridget Everett’s little show is a gem, too.

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I was lucky enough to see it early and told you about it, and now I can reiterate just how essential it is for you to see “It Ain’t Over” now that it’s in theaters in time for what would’ve been Yogi’s 98th birthday on Friday.

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I never saw Arvydas Sabonis play in his prime, just glimpses when he was an old man in Portland. I don’t remember Bill Walton at UCLA or with the Blazers, though you could see what he’d been every once in a while in his later days in Boston. I’d like to think watching them in their youth would’ve provided the same joy that Nikola Jokic does now.

Whack Back at Vac

Michael Diamond: When the minor league exploits of a well-traveled catcher become the bright spot of baseball in N.Y., we are in for a long summer.

Vac: And we’re still a month away from summer! See ya at the beach.

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Bill Bitay: There will come a day when a baseball manager’s blunder will be defined in Wiktionary as a “Boonedoggle.”

Vac: I think that day has arrived, Bill.

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@Ewagner5: Remember this feeling of how the baseball teams have been playing when the Jets play. All the excitement for this during the regular season.

@MikeVacc: I already have Jets fans in my life bracing for the 1-5 start heading into the Giants game.

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Thomas Crehan: Mike, the biggest concern for Jet fans is Aaron Rodgers turning into Max Scherzer.

Vac: See what I mean?