The Knicks will reconvene this week with a legitimate chance to secure a proper playoff berth — realistically as high as the No. 5 spot in the Eastern Conference — over their final 22 games, beginning Friday night in Washington.

Tom Thibodeau’s team hit the All-Star break last week with a 33-27 record, including three straight wins after the front office fortified the roster with the acquisition of dependable two-way wing Josh Hart at the trade deadline.

The Knicks sit in sixth place in the East, a half-game above the Heat to avoid the play-in tournament and encouragingly just two games behind the No. 5 Nets, who jettisoned the All-Star tandem of Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant at the deadline.

They also have gone 8-6 in the absence of defensive anchor Mitchell Robinson; he is expected to return from January thumb surgery soon after the schedule resumes.

Securing the fifth seed might set up a juicy first-round playoff matchup with the Cavaliers and their imported All-Star Donovan Mitchell, who the Knicks failed to obtain last summer.

Julius Randle received a deserved All-Star nod, his second in three seasons, but $104 million signee Jalen Brunson has been the MVP for the Knicks in almost every definition of the term.

The former Villanova star not only has helped unlock Randle after the power forward endured a trying, step-back season one year ago. Brunson also has posted insane numbers over his past 22 games, averaging 29.7 points while shooting 51.5 percent overall and 46.6 percent from 3-point range since returning Jan. 2 from a three-game absence due to a hip injury.

Based solely on contributions in relation to salary, veteran shooting guard Evan Fournier best fits this category.

Fournier, who set a team record with 241 made 3-pointers last season in the first of a four-year, $73 million contract, was removed by Thibodeau from the primary rotation in late November. He has made 10 appearances off the bench as an injury fill-in over the past three months, including a 17-point performance over 24 minutes in a key win this month over the 76ers.

The 30-year-old Frenchman is owed $18.9 million next year with a to-be-declined $19 million club option, meaning he should be easier to trade in the offseason as a potential expiring contract.

Quentin Grimes has emerged as a dependable two-way starter ahead of Fournier and a Rising Stars participant in his second NBA season, but many expected the 2021 late first-round pick to seize a bigger role, especially after a breakout performance in summer league and the his exclusion by the front office in trade talks for Donovan Mitchell in the summer.

The far bigger surprise has been the advancement of Immanuel Quickley as a viable sixth man, especially his improvement at the defensive end of the court. He boasts the second-best defensive rating among the team’s regulars (behind Miles McBride) and the third-best net rating (behind Robinson and McBride). Thibodeau also has often praised Quickley for his vocal leadership at that end of the court.

The Knicks sent a first-round pick to Atlanta (with Kevin Knox) in a trade for Cam Reddish in January of last season in what turned out to be an ill-conceived gamble on the talented wing.

Reddish actually appeared in 20 games, including eight starts, early this season while Grimes was sidelined. But he was completely buried in Thibodeau’s doghouse — with no appearances after Dec. 3 — until he was shipped with another first-round pick to Portland in exchange for Hart on Feb. 8.

While Hart has been an ideal fit in three straight Knicks victories, Reddish also has been contributing for the Blazers with a scoring average of 11.3 points in three starts.

The win that prompted Randle to pronounce that these Knicks “can beat anybody and lose to anybody” was their signature moment of the year, outlasting the team with the best record in the league, the Celtics, in overtime on Jan. 26 in Boston after flushing a 13-point lead in the fourth quarter.

Randle finished with 37 points while Brunson scored 29 and also notched the game-sealing blocked shot in OT.

The flip side to that euphoric victory was a crazy and historic overtime loss in Dallas in the Knicks’ first game after Christmas, in which they squandered a nine-point lead with 33.9 seconds left in regulation against the Mavericks.

Mavs superstar Luka Doncic posted a ridiculous 60-point triple-double, with 21 rebounds and 10 assists for the first 60-point, 20-rebound triple-double in NBA history.

“That’s a game we gotta win. There ain’t too much else about that. We gotta win that,” Quickley said that night. “I’m sure if you look at the probability of us winning the game with 20 seconds left, I’m pretty sure it’s like 99-point-something. We just made too many mistakes and they capitalized on it.”

The odds actually were even longer than Quickley’s estimation. NBA teams had posted zero wins in 13,884 games over the past 20 years when trailing by at least nine points with no more than 35 seconds remaining.

RJ Barrett still is the clear third wheel in the Knicks’ offensive hierarchy behind Randle and Brunson. He’s averaging 19.7 points per game — a shade below his career-best 20.0 scoring average last year.

But the coaching staff still is waiting for better consistency from the fourth-year small forward, especially after inking him to a four-year extension worth $107 million in August.

Barrett continues to show an adeptness to get to the rim, but he’s shooting just .323 from 3-point range, his worst long-distance numbers since his rookie campaign (.320).

The addition of Hart — Brunson’s former Villanova championship teammate — already has cost McBride a rotation spot. He’s also been playing the majority of minutes down the stretch ahead of Grimes in his first three games since the trade.

It’s legitimate to wonder whether Thibodeau eventually might infuse Hart into the starting lineup, ahead of Grimes, or dare we say it, a slumping Barrett.

Robinson’s pending return also will force Thibodeau to decide whether Slam Dunk participant Jericho Sims has earned some continued minutes as an occasional alternative to Isaiah Hartenstein or even Obi Toppin on the second unit, based on matchups.