This win shows how special Jalen Brunson and these Knicks are

Wrap this one in cellophane. Place it in a safe place, away from the dust, away from the elements. Keep it looking, and feeling, as fresh and as new and as real as it did around 9:55 Thursday night when 19,812 jumped to their feet and greeted the final buzzer with a roar they could hear back in 1994 or so, one that tried to reach all the way to this spring.

You want to know about this collection of Knicks? Here’s your answer key.

There were a dozen different reasons why they should have lost to the Pacers at Madison Square Garden. They were missing three starters and a key reserve. They were facing high-octane Indiana, even if its resident magician, Tyrese Haliburton, was on a minutes restriction. They fell behind by 15 in the second quarter, by 10 in the third, by eight early in the fourth. They trailed for 42 straight minutes.

There was only one reason why they could win this game:

Because they demanded that the game be won.

And so it was. The final was 109-105. Jalen Brunson, freshly anointed an All-Star for the first time, played the part, scoring 40 points, making every essential basket down the stretch, playing the final two minutes, no doubt, aiming at the basket in the middle of the three he was seeing after getting poked in the eye.

“We kept fighting, man,” Brunson said when it was over, after absorbing one last thunderous roar from the exiting crowd. “No matter what, we keep fighting. It’s what we do, we fight, especially here.”

One last crashing wave of appreciation from the faithful.

“This place is unbelievable,” he said.

So, right now, is this team, winners of nine straight and 15 out of 17, a mere half-game behind the Bucks for the second slot in the East. This time Quentin Grimes joined the absent troika of Mitchell Robinson, Julius Randle and OG Anunoby, further thinning an already threadbare lineup. Didn’t matter. The Pacers are the highest-rated offense in the league. Didn’t matter.

After surging to a six-point lead, the Knicks allowed the Pacers to sneak ahead, 100-99, after the refs missed Indiana using Brunson’s face as a speed bag with 120 seconds left.

Didn’t matter.

“We have an All-Star and an MVP-caliber point guard with us,” Donte DiVincenzo (20 points, two steals) said. “We play together and we’re going to keep going. When you play that way, you’re tough to beat.”

Lately, they’ve been impossible to beat. Lately, it’s almost like the Knicks enjoy amping up the degree of difficulty, shrugging off the missing pieces of their puzzle right now, laughing off tough shooting nights from DiVincenzo (who missed 18 of the 26 shots he attempted) and Josh Hart (who missed all six of his).

Lately, there is always one part of the plan that is even more unshakeable than it’s already been.

“Jalen,” Tom Thibodeau said, “was just Jalen.”

Brunson, of course, begged off answering a question about the All-Star berth as he left the floor, even as the deafening Garden stragglers chanted his name, a moment that came damn close to adding watery eyes to his wide smile, before finally shaking his head. “I got nothing to say,” he said, and by saying that, he said plenty.

He knew what else had to happen Thursday. He realized that three of his teammates had managed to snare double-digit rebounds — Hart (12), Precious Achiuwa (16) and Isaiah Hartenstein (18). He knew that Deuce McBride — given bonus minutes — scored 16 points, including an enormous 3 that started the Knicks on the 12-0 run that turned down-six to up-six midway through the fourth.

“We were down, we stayed with it and we came back and a lot of guys stepped up in general,” Hartenstein said. “The group of guys we got, the coach we got, we don’t feel we’ll ever give up no matter how big the [deficit] is.”

That’s it, right there. That’s why this game belongs in the bubble wrap, easily accessible to study and admire, because that summarizes this team best. In the NBA, teams shrug their shoulders and accept the probability and inevitability of losing all the time. Right now, across a month and a day, the Knicks have simply chosen not to.

It starts with Brunson. It always does. Last week, when Charles Barkley expressed outrage that Brunson wasn’t named an All-Star starter, he said something that’s been on a lot of minds these past two years: “Nobody — and I’ll be honest with you, even the Knicks — knew he’d be this good.”

Whether they did or they didn’t, it’s abundantly clear: He is this good, and because of that the Knicks are this good. They had every reason to lose this game. Decided to win anyway. Wrap it up and put it on the shelf for safe keeping.