NEW YORK — Darko Rajakovic allowed himself to break character, to laugh at the task at hand before reverting back to his stoic, hardcore persona as Toronto Raptors head coach.

The try topic at hand? The Knicks: the team his Raptors had next on the schedule, a team they could very well see as a first-round opponent in the Eastern Conference playoff picture.

And before Rajakovic addressed reporters ahead of tipoff at Madison Square Garden on Friday, he took one last look at New York’s depth chart, at the players wearing orange and blue he’d face in the second-to-last regular-season game before the playoffs begin on April 18.

“They have one of the best rosters in the NBA,” Rajakovic said, cracking a smile. “They’ve been coached really well by coach [Mike] Brown. They are very competitive. They have the personnel — they have a full roster. I was just counting. They have four point guards and every position on the team has a lot of talent.”

Rajakovic’s smile was fleeting, as was the score at Madison Square Garden, as will be a potential first-round playoff series between the Knicks and Raptors.

Because the Knicks swept their season series against Toronto, 4-0, in a resounding 112-95 victory over the Raptors on Friday, and the same — a shutout sweep — is on the table should the two teams meet in Round 1 of the postseason.

That could be why Rajakovic’s smile faded as quickly as the Raptors, who fell behind 14-3, took a 21-20 lead before the end of the first quarter, then found themselves down by as many as 17 when the Knicks flexed their scoring muscle in the middle two quarters.

The Raptors were without a significant contingent of their starters and bench with former Knicks R.J. Barrett (knee soreness) and Immanuel Quickley (plantar fasciitis), as well as rookie Collin Murray-Boyles (neck sprain) and Trayce Jackson-Davis (illness) sidelined. The Knicks, too, were shorthanded: Miles McBride (core muscle surgery management) and Mitchell Robinson (ankle surgery management) both sat the second leg of the back-to-back after Thursday’s victory over the Boston Celtics.

The Knicks, however, already beat the Raptors by 16 on March 3. They won by 27 on Jan. 28 and 16 on Dec. 9. Add 17 more in the victory on Friday. And while the Raptors are loaded on the wings — Barrett, Murray-Boyles, Brandon Ingram and Scottie Barnes all interchangeable defending the perimeter — Toronto lacks the star power.

New York packs tons of it, and Mike Brown had no intention of hiding his hand against a potential playoff opponent.

“We just play and try to win,” Brown said. “When you start messing with the basketball gods it bites you in the ass, so I ain’t gonna do that.”

Rajakovic echoed a similar sentiment, though he had a different reasoning: The Raptors hadn’t quite earned the luxury of weaponizing gamesmanship against a team they could be scheduled to face in the playoffs — not without having fully locked in a top-five seed of their own.

“We’re not thinking about playoffs right now or potential matchups,” he said. “For us it’s a daily grind of focusing on the task ahead of us.”

For the Raptors, the unenviable task of slowing down Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns proved far too tall of an order, underscoring the very reason the Knicks can dispose of them — and fast — in a potential first-round showdown.

Brunson finished with 29 points on 12-of-18 shooting from the field and watched the final three-plus minutes of the game from the bench. Towns abused the Toronto interior for 22 points, 10 rebounds and five assists. It’s the kind of performance responsible for preemptively wiping Rajakovic’s smile from his face as he broke down the Knicks’ roster ahead of tipoff from a fan’s perspective before reverting back to the reality of dealing with New York’s two-headed attack as a coach.

“[The Knicks] have a lot of depth. They’re an elite offensive rebounding team. They have an amazing closer in Brunson. They have an amazing shooter and rebounder and playmaker in Karl-Anthony Towns,” Rajakovic said. “I don’t have enough time here. The game’s gonna start soon, but I can talk about their roster and how well they’ve played for a long time. They’re an elite, elite team.”

Now, Rajakovic might need to start game planning for the orange and blue. The Knicks’ victory over the Raptors made a New York-Toronto first-round series that much more likely, and with that victory comes momentum over a team attempting to punch above its weight.

The Raptors’ loss — plus the Atlanta Hawks’ blowout of the Cleveland Cavaliers on Friday — flipped the fifth and sixth seed standings in the Eastern Conference.

The Hawks are No. 5 in the East entering Saturday, and the Raptors are No. 6. Should that placement hold — Atlanta plays its season finale against No. 10 Miami on Sunday while the Raptors take on the miserable Brooklyn Nets — the Knicks and Raptors will draw each other in the first round. If the Hawks lose to the Heat, the Raptors, who own the tiebreaker, will take the fifth seed and face No. 4 Cleveland, creating a No. 3 vs. No. 6 matchup between the Knicks and Hawks.

The Knicks have a small piece of business left: their season finale at home against the Charlotte Hornets. They no longer have a shot at catching Boston in the East with the Celtics clinching the No. 2 seed in a blowout over the New Orleans Pelicans.

The Knicks also have an addition to the injury report: OG Anunoby turned his ankle in the second quarter and was ruled out for the remainder of the game.

The severity of Anunoby’s injury is unknown, but he tweaked his ankle in the second then continued to play on it before the Knicks ruled him out at half.

The Knicks will need Anunoby for their playoff run — but maybe not against the Raptors.

If this regular season has proven anything, it’s that the Raptors are the dream scenario to open the Knicks in the playoffs — and they moved one step closer to that matchup on Friday.

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