Well, it took them long enough.

With a win tonight and a loss by the Clippers against Phoenix, the Golden State Warriors can end the NBA’s longest playoff drought — it’s been an unlucky 13 years since their postseason itinerary consisted of something besides a May trip to Secaucus for the draft lottery.

Their impending playoff status has taken most by surprise. Just a couple weeks ago, it seemed the misery would continue. On March 26, the Warriors lost to the Spurs by 37 points on their home court, falling two games behind the Clippers for the West’s final playoff spot. That effectively became three games when the Clippers’ tie-breaker advantage was thrown in, and with so little time left in the season and the Clippers surging, it seemed all but impossible for the Warriors to catch up.

But catch up they did, taking the lead for the no. 8 seed over the weekend and finding themselves in the driver’s seat heading into the season’s final two games. The Warriors have won seven of their past eight games, and done it in impressive fashion — six of the wins were by double figures.

They’re also 14–5 since the low point of the season on March 4. That’s when Warriors coach Don Nelson got a technical foul at the buzzer, allowing Washington’s Gilbert Arenas to shoot a gamewinning free throw. That loss was the Warriors’ fifth straight and sent them to 26–35 on the season.

But the Warriors’ season was a bit of a mirror image of the Knicks’ campaign. Whereas the Knicks suffered a rash of injuries during their playoff push, Golden State’s players suddenly became healthy. The biggest key was in the backcourt, where dynamic point guard Baron Davis and high-flying running mate Jason Richardson were in the same lineup for one of the first times all season.

With their lineup finally intact, Golden State heated up. The Warriors got a key win over the Clippers to stay in the race, took advantage of an easy run of schedule, and caught a couple key breaks with injuries to their opponents (most notably when Houston’s Tracy McGrady checked out minutes into their game on April 4).

Things have snowballed since. Though Davis has been limited to about 30 minutes a game since his return, he’s taking much better shots, and the result has been his usual 20-point scoring with a much higher shooting percentage (20.7 points on 42.6% shooting before the All-Star break; 19.6 points on 48.4% shooting after). Richardson, after limping through the first half of the year, is averaging 22.1 points per game in April on 50.5% shooting.

The Warriors are doing it playing classic “Nellyball.” The starting center on many nights is Al Harrington — the same Al Harrington who was playing small forward for the Pacers before a midseason trade. Joining him up front is Stephen Jackson, a guard in Indiana. The Warriors don’t worry about defense because they know they’re such a headache at the other end. They’re right: They’ve scored at 120 points in three straight games, and have hit 110 seven times in eight contests.

And somewhere in here, there’s a lesson for the Knicks. The Warriors have a lot of the same problems at New York does. Like the Knicks, their general manager (Chris Mullin) is a legendary former player whose tenure has been marked by several horrible contracts, including indefensible deals for Adonal Foyle and Mike Dunleavy that totaled nearly $100 million.

Like the Knicks, these Warriors aren’t much interested in defense. They rank 19th in the NBA in Defensive Efficiency (my measure of a team’s points allowed per 100 opponent possessions), while the Knicks rank 25th. Moreover, the only reason Golden State is as high as they are is that of late they’ve played much harder than several of their obviously-tanking-for-the-draft peers near the bottom of the rankings.

So what’s made the difference for Golden State? Health would be Isiah Thomas’s answer, but there are at least two others. First, the draft. The Warriors have been bad for longer than the Knicks and have kept more of their draft picks. That’s allowed them to pluck players like Richardson, Monta Ellis, Mickael Pietrus, Patrick O’Bryant, Andris Biedrins, Dunleavy, Troy Murphy, and Ike Diogu in recent years, with the latter three converted into Harrington and Jackson at midseason.

And because the Warriors have so many productive players with inexpensive contracts, they’ve managed to skirt the luxury tax despite Mullin’s foolishness with bigger contracts — although it required giving away guard Derek Fisher before the season and shying away from using the midlevel exception.

This technique has obvious implications for the Knicks because if there’s one thing Isiah Thomas is good at, it’s the draft. As a friend complained to me recently, “Why don’t they just tell Isiah he’s not allowed to make any trades or sign any contracts, and he just has to do everything through the draft?”

In three years, Thomas has snagged players like David Lee, Renaldo Balkman, Nate Robinson, and the since-traded Trevor Ariza with picks that came 20th or later. The late-March signing of big man Randolph Morris could be a similar coup — he would have been a first-rounder had he been in this year’s draft.

But in addition to hanging on to their draft picks, there’s a more immediate solution that could offer some help for the Knicks. Perhaps they could use a dose of Nellyball. Right now they play a half-court oriented offense that benefits Eddy Curry greatly, but doesn’t do a lot for all these young, sleek colts Isiah keeps plucking in the draft. The Knicks rank 20th in the league in Pace Factor, my measure of how many possessions a team uses in its games, putting them among the league’s plodders. By contrast, Golden State ranks first.

Nobody questions that Curry is a major force in the halfcourt and should be utilized heavily if the fast break isn’t available, but this can be overdone too. In his focus on Curry, one has to wonder if Isiah is trying to play mid-1990s basketball a decade too late. Players like Balkman, Lee, Robinson, and Jamal Crawford thrive in the open court, and that last could grow depending on what the offseason brings.

Thus, maybe the answer for the Knicks isn’t worrying about their defense — something that will always be a weakness as long as a Curry-Lee-Frye frontcourt is on offer. Maybe it’s putting the pedal to the metal more on offense and running teams ragged with Nellyball when they aren’t pounding away with Curry.

If so, perhaps all these athletic young guys Isiah keeps finding in the draft can get the Knicks where the Warriors are now … and help the Knicks end their own increasingly embarrassing playoff schneid.

jhollinger@nysun.com