14 of 24.

That’s what the Knicks shot from the free-throw line in Sunday’s disappointing 107–105 loss to the injury-ravaged Bucks, and that’s what Isiah Thomas wrote on the team blackboard in the locker room after the game.

He followed that up with a tirade about his team’s poor performance from the charity stripe.

“If we make free throws, you can add at least seven, eight wins to our win column,” Thomas said. “We practice it every day. We harp on it since the first day of training camp. It’s the thing that’s killing us right now and the whole season.”

Indeed, the Knicks are 26th in the NBA in free-throw percentage at 72.1%. And had the Knicks won the seven or eight games to which Thomas alluded, New York would be 26–20 or 27–19 and comfortably in first place in the Atlantic Division.

But if the “seven or eight games” seems like hyperbole, that’s because it is. Thomas is effectively saying the Knicks could have turned the outcome of about one game in six just by shooting marginally better from the free-throw line.

Even so, it brings up a good question: How much is it costing the Knicks? We know it probably isn’t seven or eight games, but even if it’s three or four that’s a pretty huge impact.

To determine the cost of the Knicks’ wayward foul shooting, we can try two different approaches. First and foremost, let’s evaluate it in the most literal way, by going through New York’s entire schedule and looking for games where improved freethrow shooting would have made the difference between winning and losing.

Note that I said “improved” freethrow shooting, not “perfect.” For instance, New York missed eight free throws in a four-point loss to Boston on November 18, so it’s theoretically possible to blame the loss on poor free-throw shooting. However, New York was 42–of–50 (84%) from the line that game — a percentage better than any team in the league is shooting for the season. Had the Knicks made a further five free throws to switch the outcome from a four-point loss to a one-point win, they would have shot an absurd 47–of–50 (94%). So yes, it’s theoretically possible to blame that loss on freethrow shooting, but not very realistic.

Several other games meet the same limitations. For instance, New York would have had to shoot 100% from the stripe to turn a three-point loss to Toronto on December 2 into a victory.

That said, we can come up with a few games where better foul shooting could have produced a win. Sunday, obviously, is one of them — had New York shot 17-of-24 from the line, a hardly daunting 70.8%, they would have left Wisconsin with a W. But there are at least three others:

• In a 97–90 loss to Boston on December 11, New York made only 17 of 32 from the line (Eddy Curry, at 8-of-15, was the main culprit). Had New York made 25 of 32, a 78.1% clip, it would have walked out a winner.

•In a 99–98 loss to Washington on January 17, the Knickers were only 11 of 16 at the line (68.8%). With two more makes (81.1%), the ‘Bockers would have been victorious.

• And in their very next game, a 101–100 loss to New Jersey on January 19, the Knicks were a reasonable 32 of 43 (74.4%) at the stripe. But they only needed two more free throws, for an equally reasonable 34-of-43 (79.0%) conversion rate, to leave the Garden a winner.

So that gives us a total of four losses where one can plausibly blame the free-throw shooting. Had they converted those four games into wins, they’d be a much more respectable 23–23 at the moment and would be sitting atop the Titanic Division this morning.

However, that argument pushes logic to its absolute limit. Yes, the Knicks could be four games ahead in the standings if they had made 15 more free throws at the exact moments when the team needed them the most, but this hardly seems realistic.

A better method is to ask how many points the Knicks have lost, over the course of the season, by shooting free throws worse than the average team. Then, we can look at how many wins those extra points might be expected to produce, and glean from that the true cost of New York’s free throw woes.

The Knicks have made 975 of their 1,352 attempts on the season, a 72.1% conversion rate. Since the average team shoots 75.3% this season, the Knicks are 3.2% worse than the norm. Apply that across all 1,352 attempts and you’ll find that the Knicks have short-changed themselves to the tune of 43.3 points so far this season.

But then, we must remember that the offensive team occasionally gets the rebound of a missed free throw. Let’s assume this happens 15% of the time (which would be about half as common as on regular misses, a reasonable estimate given the inside position the defensive team gets on these shots).

Let’s further assume that about 55% of free throws can be rebounded (a reasonable estimate based on my research, since technical fouls, first shots of a two-shot foul and the like can’t be rebounded), and that the rebounding team gets about 1.03 points from its revived possession (that’s the league average).

In that case, New York would have gained about 3.7 points from those free-throw misses, so the total cost of the misfires isn’t 43.3 points but 39.6. Those 39.6 points don’t leave nearly as big a dent. Since it takes about 25 points, on average, to swing a loss to a win, the free throws have cost only about 1.6 wins thus far. If the freethrow struggles don’t abate, we can expect free throws to cost the Knicks three games over the course of the full season.

Thus, it’s only cost them about one-and-a-half so far, and not the seven or eight games that Thomas estimated. But in this case, I can forgive his hyperbole. Yes, freethrow shooting might have only cost the Knicks in one of their 27 losses thus far. But it’s hard to deny that Sunday’s game in Milwaukee was the one.

jhollinger@nysun.com