Sheridan: Phil Jackson keeps hearing one question: “How long?”

GREENBURGH, N.Y. — He gets asked the question once per day, on average. “How long, Phil? How long will it take?”

Phil Jackson never answers in specifics. At least that is how he made it sound Friday as he was asked that very same question yet again as the New York Knicks prepared to open their 2014-15 training camp.

“How long?”

When will the championship drought that began in 1973-74 come to an end? When will the reconstruction be complete? When will the ‘Bockers be able to legitimately compete for an NBA title?

When, Phil. When?

“I hear it once a day if I’m out on the streets for a while,” he said. “I haven’t ridden the subway much for a while, but it is once a day.”

Jackson probably has an answer in mind, but he keeps it to himself. He spent most of the summer in New York, and he said he hasn’t been back to California since the Fourth of July and he doesn’t plan to be back until Thanksgiving, while the Knicks are in the middle of a swing through the Midwest. He has transplanted himself to the city where he plans to take on what can arguably be described as the biggest challenge of his career, and he enters the upcoming season with expectations that are both realistic and pedestrian.

“We believe we are going to be a playoff team, but then we don’t know how far we are going to go,” Jackson said at Media Day. He was wearing a gray sweatsuit with a pair of non-matching, pink-hued sneakers in what had to be some sort of an unofficial Knicks record for setting the Casual Friday dress code bar extraordinarily low. This was like out-Bermaning Berman.

Jackson explained how he took over a Chicago Bulls team back in the early 1990s that was ready-made to compete for a championship. Same thing when he took over in Los Angeles and guided the Lakers to three titles. Those teams already had the personnel necessary to legitimately compete for a title.

The Knicks? They have Carmelo Anthony, which is a nice piece. They have little else when it comes to fielding a team that can compete with the Clevelands and Chicagos of the East.

Don’t get me wrong, they will not be bad. They have depth at every position, Jackson has turned over 35 percent of the roster, they have a coach in Derek Fisher who gets a year to learn his craft while using training wheels, and they have salary cap flexibility in the summer of 2015 – and again in the summer of 2016 if they so choose.

And what is important is the summer of 2016, because that is when Kevin Durant will become a free agent. And make no mistake, Durant is the guy that Jackson wants. You can say all the nice things you want about Rajon Rondo and Marc Gasol and Tobias Harris, three of the best players who will be available on the market who the Knicks will pursue. Rondo and Gasol will be unrestricted next summer and Harris — who wants desperately to play for the Knicks, Bulls, Lakers or Clippers — will be restricted.

But the key piece of the puzzle is Durant, who played alongside Fisher last season and who was coached by one of the Knicks’ lesser-known offseason additions.

Assistant Brian Keefe is a guy who had been with Durant since his rookie season in Seattle, a guy with whom Durant bonded closely during their time together in Oklahoma City. I’ll go so far as to say that neither Jose Calderon nor Samuel Dalembert nor Quincy Acy nor Cleanthony Early nor Jason Smith was their biggest offseason pickup.

The stealth acquisition was Keefe, who could be the key to Durant choosing the Knicks over the Washington Wizards or the Thunder when the reigning MVP goes on the open market in July 2016.

“This team does not have the personality” that Jackson’s Lakers and Bulls teams had, explained the Zen Master, going on to say that this season will be about bonding, about learning to play within the triangle offense system, about making the personal sacrifices and playing with the requisite unbounded energy to develop into an elite organization.

Anthony will eventually have to learn to play with the ball at the top of the circle and off the wing, something Scottie Pippen learned in Chicago and Kobe Bryant learned in Los Angeles. It is a part of the triangle system, and although Anthony won’t be asked to do it immediately, he is going to be forced to learn it eventually. It comes with the territory when you buy into a Phil Jackson offensive system.

“Players gradually assume the capabilities of competing for a championship,” Jackson said.

The most important job over the summer was convincing Anthony to stick around, which is what happened. The second most important thing was laying the groundwork for a second superstar to come through the door. By keeping his cap flexibility and hiring Keefe, Jackson did that. The most important thing for the upcoming season is getting whatever they can from Andrea Bargnani and Amar’e Stoudemire before their massive salaries ($11.5 million for Bargnani; $23.4 million for Stoudemire) come off the cap (as do Dalembert, Jason Smith and Travis Outlaw, who make a combined $10.3 million). If a way can be found in the next two years to trade Jose Calderon (owed $7.7 million in 2016-17), the room will be there to get a max player in 2015 and Durant in 2016.

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You want ‘Melo, Rondo/Gasol and Durant as your Big Three, Knicks fans?

Your patience will be appreciated. But that is the type of thing Jackson is trying to accomplish.

And in three years, a team with those three guys as Jackson’s own Big Three will be legitimately able to compete for a championship.

So while Jackson would not and has not answered the big question of “How long?” the answer is not one, not two, but three years.

In the meantime, get ready to aim for the playoffs and hope for an appearance in the second round. Maybe even a trip to the conference finals if a major injury knocks out a great player for one of the two teams — Cleveland and Chicago — that figure to rule the Eastern Conference in the upcoming season and in 2015-16, too.

After that?

The best and earliest possibility for a championship parade down the Canyon of Heroes on Lower Broadway is late June 2017.

That’s how long.

Chris Sheridan is publisher and editor-in-chief of SheridanHoops.com. Based in New York, he has been regularly covering Knicks games since 1991. Follow him on Twitter.