New York Knicks head coach Mike Brown might have showed his hand Friday when it comes to his playoff rotation.

With a nearly full roster at his disposal — minus Karl-Anthony Towns, who was ruled out at game time with a right elbow injury — in a 40-point thumping of the Chicago Bulls, Brown didn’t play Jose Alvarado, Jordan Clarkson or Mohamed Diawara until the fourth quarter, when the game was completely out of reach.

For Alvarado specifically, this was the first time since he got traded to New York at the deadline that he didn’t play in the first half of a contest.

“I went with the combination of Landry (Shamet) and (Miles McBride) as the backup point guards,” Brown told reporters after the 136-96 win. “We got those two guys out there; I wanted to take a look at that. Jose has done a fantastic job for us, but part of it is that we haven’t had a lot of healthy guards. Jose stepped in and did a nice job. (McBride) is getting healthier, and Landry is getting healthy. I’m trying to find minutes for those guys, because those guys are capable of playing that spot. That’s going to be a priority for me, because they’ve proven themselves for us.”

With four games remaining in the Knicks’ regular season, I’m going to give my thoughts on how I believe Brown will use his players in New York’s first playoff game.

Starters will remain starters, unless …

There’s an old saying: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The Knicks have taken that, remixed it and created their own version that goes: “If it’s not working, keep doing it until it hopefully does.”

New York has two years of sample size now to suggest that the starting lineup of Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby, Josh Hart and Towns doesn’t work. This season alone, that five-man unit has played the third-most minutes of any lineup in the NBA and carries a plus-0.7 net rating. (Last year, the group had a plus-3.3 net rating while playing the most minutes together in the NBA.)

For comparison, the Charlotte Hornets’ starting lineup, which has played close to the same amount of minutes, has a plus-27.8 net rating. The Atlanta Hawks’ starting lineup has a plus-23.9 net rating. The Detroit Pistons’ starting lineup has a plus-11.8 net rating.

The Knicks’ starting lineup just hasn’t been good enough as a collective, especially when you factor in the resources used to put it together, and yet New York has had two different coaches stick with it for the duration of the regular season.

Brown has threatened to change this group, but he hasn’t done it yet. With so few games remaining in the regular season, it seems more unlikely that he’ll do it before the playoffs.

Unless …

The Knicks’ four remaining games are all against postseason-caliber teams. It’s possible that New York doesn’t face the best versions of those teams if playoff seeding starts to sort itself out in the final week. However, if the Knicks’ starting lineup once again puts up a stinker Monday night against the red-hot Hawks — and is a big reason New York loses its sixth straight game against winning teams — I could see Brown making a change. I’m not guaranteeing he will, but the Knicks would have two days between their Hawks matchup and their Thursday meeting against the Boston Celtics. That would be the time to do it, considering the regular season ends on Sunday, and then New York will have time to practice between then and the start of the first round.

OG Anunoby (8) and Mikal Bridges have been contributors for a Knicks team looking to make a deep postseason run. (Petre Thomas/ Imagn Images)

Massaging egos, surely, has played a part in why neither Brown nor Thibodeau made changes. Everyone in the starting lineup has either been a starter for the bulk of their careers, helped turn the franchise around or took a lot of resources to acquire. From a coach or front-office perspective, it might not be worth losing a player mentally in the regular season, even if the numbers suggest a change is needed. However, with the playoffs here and the seriousness ramped up a bit, Brown, in theory, has more leverage to look around and think, “So, do you guys want to win or not?” and make the change if he feels it’s necessary.

It might end up being too late, and there’s no guarantee that changing the starting lineup will help New York start games better. With that said, we know for a fact that the current starting lineup doesn’t work together.

If you wonder what I would do with the starting lineup, I wrote about it last month.

Who will come off the bench in Game 1?

If we’re reading the tea leaves from Friday’s game, the answer might be obvious. Many coaches tend to play eight or nine guys in the postseason. Brown, in my opinion, won’t be any different.

My prediction as to who, without question, will play in the first game of the playoffs looks like this: Brunson, Bridges, Anunoby, Hart, Towns, Shamet, McBride and Mitchell Robinson. After that, I think it’ll be a “break glass in case of emergency” situation.

Clarkson feels like the first in line to be the ninth player. The players ahead of him play with variance, so if the likes of Bridges, Shamet or McBride aren’t shooting well, Clarkson feels like the natural person to step in. Furthermore, Clarkson has reinvented himself over the last month. He’s defending with physicality and hitting the offensive glass hard. His resurgence since getting benched at the top of the year, surely, will make Brown’s decision more difficult.

Alvarado is in a weird spot. He brings great energy defensively and plays with pace in the open court. Yet, his 3-point shooting has been rough since coming to New York, his half-court decision making in this offense is still a work in progress and, realistically, how many small guards can Brown play? A rotation of Brunson, McBride and Alvarado is a very small backcourt for New York. Similar to Clarkson, depending on how lethargic the Knicks are in a particular game, I could see Brown tossing in Alvarado to try and get things going. There’s a chance Brown goes to Alvarado in very limited minutes early in the playoffs and treats him as the “half” in an 8 1/2- or 9 1/2-man rotation.

After that, Diawara has been a great surprise for the Knicks this season. But the rookie feels situational depending on the matchups and how desperate Brown could get to find answers if things go wrong. The same goes for Jeremy Sochan.

The playoffs are almost here. It’s time for New York to walk the walk, and who will participate in the quest is starting to feel more concrete.