He was awful. He was frustrated. He was searching for answers. We know this, exactly 50 years later, because in the newspaper accounts of the Knicks’ 112-111 win over the Phoenix Suns on Nov. 16, 1971, it’s all there in black-and-white newsprint.

“I was awful,” Earl (the Pearl) Monroe said. “It’s frustrating. I’m searching for answers right now.”

It was Pearl’s third game as a Knick, five days after the Knicks had sent the ultra-popular duo of Mike Riordan and Dave Stallworth (plus a boatload of cash) to the Baltimore Bullets in exchange for Pearl, the Knicks’ onetime antagonist, Walt Frazier’s one-time archnemesis, and now a round peg the Knicks were trying to jam into their title-tested square hole. And it wasn’t going well for the Pearl.

He shot the ball nine times in his 13 minutes of playing time that night. He missed all nine. Every time he squared up the 18,344 fans inside the Garden rose up, waiting to explode, waiting to embrace him officially. They never did. They never could. He made three free throws. He had three assists (a harbinger of the version of team-first Pearl the Knicks would enjoy, not the shoot-first-and-shoot-always version he’d been in Baltimore).

A funny thing happened at the Garden that night.

They cheered him anyway. There wasn’t a hint of boos. Now, yes: it was easy to be in a sustained good mood as a Knicks fan in those days. They were 18 months removed from a title. They would play in another NBA Finals six months later. They would win a second championship a year later. Even that night, they overcame a 19-point deficit with nine minutes left — think about doing that without a 3-point shot — and kept the Suns winless, all time, in New York.

Also? There was Clyde, who scored 39 points that night (on 16-for-22 shooting) and added eight assists and outscored the Suns by himself 13-11 down the stretch and added the game-clinching free throws with 17 seconds left. Having Clyde on their team kept Knicks fans in a good mood for the better part of a decade.

Still: not one boo. That was the testimony of the time and also of Pearl himself looking back.

“It amazes me how patient Knicks fans were with me,” Pearl told me 25 years ago, on the 25th anniversary of the trade. “I was an outsider. A week earlier I’d been the enemy. But I was hurt and I didn’t play well right away and it didn’t seem to matter to them. They were patient with me and I appreciated that.”

Ah. Patience.

There is a lesson to be learned here, of course, although it is sure to fall on deaf ears. Partly that’s because the Knicks have only started to specialize in the occasional good mood for their fans (though they did bring a four-game home losing streak into their game with the Pacers on Monday night at MSG).

But mostly it is a product of our times. It may be 50 years since Nov. 16, 1971 but Nov. 16, 2021 is an entirely different solar system. Seasons were allowed to breathe back then. As a matter of fact, the Knicks dragged a 7-9 record into that game against the Suns, and they’d just lost Willis Reed (for the rest of the season, as it turned out) to a knee injury.

And the fact is, Pearl’s arrival meant that Frazier was on the clock, too. Frazier certainly believed, in the moment, that acquiring Monroe probably meant the Knicks were looking to possibly deal him. That they didn’t until years later is beside the point. Knicks fans revered Clyde, and Pearl was a threat.

But he was also a great player. Knicks fans had seen that part up close.

And so they didn’t boo. They let Pearl’s bum ankle recover, and Pearl started to feel his way with his new team, and he and Clyde began to learn the first few notes of a backcourt jazz duet that would enliven the Garden for years.

In 1971, every basketball game wasn’t treated like a football game, the way things are in 2021. Patience was indeed a virtue. And would probably still be today, if given the chance.