If it feels like it’s been a while since we’ve enjoyed this level of matching basketball prosperity around here … well, that’s because it’s been awhile since we’ve enjoyed this level of matching basketball prosperity around here. 

The Knicks will carry a seven-game winning streak into Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night when they host the Golden State Warriors — minus Steph Curry, out a few weeks with a left shoulder subluxation. Twenty-four hours later the Steph-less Warriors will cross the river to take on the Nets, who’ll come in with a six-game winning streak. 

The Knicks and the Nets have been in the NBA together since the 1976-77 season. 

This is the first time in those 46-plus years when both teams have had winning streaks of at least six games at the same time. If you’d like to go back to the Nets’ very beginning, in 1967-68 in the ABA, then you’ll find only twice when this feat was matched. The first was in November of 1969, the Nets winning seven in a row from Nov. 16 through Nov. 30, which was concurrent to the then-record 18-game winning streak the Knicks were putting together from Oct. 24 through Nov. 28. 

The most recent time came 47 years ago, when the Nets went unbeaten in 10 games from Nov. 24 through Dec. 21 while the Knicks won six in a row from Nov. 29 until Dec. 10. 

In that Christmas season of ’74, the Nets were defending ABA champions and the Knicks were only 19 months removed from winning the 1973 NBA title, and while they mostly pretended to ignore each other’s existence when they were both playing well it was impossible not to get caught up in it. 

“It looks like it’s a great time to be a basketball fan in this city no matter what color of the ball you like better,” Clyde Frazier joked after he outplayed Tiny Archibald on Dec. 10, using the standard brown NBA rock at the Garden to score 34 points to Tiny’s 33 as the Knicks rallied to beat the Kansas City-Omaha Kings for their sixth straight. 

“Are the Knicks playing well, too?” Julius Erving said with a knowing wink a night later, when his team-high 19 points with the NBA’s red-white-and-blue ball helped the Nets clobber Marvin “Bad News” Barnes and the Spirits of St. Louis, 117-96, at Nassau Coliseum, their sixth straight in what would grow to a 10-game winning streak. 

And that was that. 

For 47 years. 

And now, suddenly, when you look at the expanded NBA standings, these are the teams with the longest current active winning streaks: 

1. New York Knicks, W7 

2. Brooklyn Nets, W6 

3. Orlando Magic, W6 

Maybe the third team on that list factored into the let’s-not-get-too-carried-away-here observations from the Knicks’ head coach after they extended their streak Sunday at Indianapolis’ Gainbridge Fieldhouse with a stirring 109-106 comeback win. 

“Winning streaks don’t mean anything,” Ebenezer Thibodeau said afterward. “The game doesn’t mean anything come the next game.” 

Well, he’s right of course. And if there’s one thing less relevant to Thibodeau than the Knicks’ winning streak, it’s the Nets’ winning streak — or anything having even remotely to do with the Nets, for that matter. 

Still. Hot is hot. Good basketball is good basketball. And the fact is the chatter surrounding both the Knicks and the Nets is a whole lot different than it was a month ago. Both teams have already faced initial season-defining crucibles, the Nets after a 2-6 start and Kyrie Irving’s annual dance with self-immolation; the Knicks after sitting at 10-13 just 17 days ago after a fifth straight loss at the Garden. 

Now the Nets are 19-12 and only three games behind the suddenly cooled-off Celtics in the East, and the Knicks are 16-13 and only a game in the loss column behind the Nets. Winning streaks, it turns out, actually are quite helpful in quickly altering the perception surrounding a team. 

“And you thought the World Cup was exciting!” Nets coach Jacque Vaughn quipped after the Nets staged a furious rally to overtake the woeful Pistons on Sunday night for No. 6. 

All due respect to the futbol that captured a lot of imaginations around here, and the football which still obsesses a large measure of the local populace, but for now, it’s perfectly fine to resurrect an old signature for one of the other games in town. The Knicks and the Nets, playing well at the same time? 

Yeah. That’s what the City Game is supposed to feel like.