Red Sox fans, I don’t want to hear about your curse. I have my own.

I spent last Friday evening watching the Toronto Raptors celebrate their playoff win at expense of my New York Knicks. Although it was the Knicks’ first first-round playoff exit in 10 years, it wasn’t surprising. The Knicks were without starter Larry Johnson, and were hardly prohibitive favorites to begin with.

But what bothered me is the way it happened. Year in and year out, the Knicks’ season reads like a David E. Kelley drama. I take the way the Knicks keep losing as a sign that the almighty writer just doesn’t want the Knicks to win in my lifetime.

The Knicks were beset by a number of distractions during the Toronto series, chief among them a bizarre hostage situation involving center Marcus Camby’s family at their Connecticut home. The standoff ended with Camby’s sister a victim of sexual assault, and Camby himself badly shaken.

Camby, the team’s best player this year, did not recover. He was dreadful in a Raptor blowout, and sat out the third game to be with his family. Even when he returned, Camby wasn’t the same.

Events like Camby’s ordeal put sports in perspective. The healing process his family has to endure from this point on transcends the importance of any playoff series, and anyone who faults Camby for his ineffectiveness or his Game 3 absence needs a head examination.

But the thoughts of a Knick fan like myself inevitably drift back to the game, and how fate has done it to us once again.

Every year, fate finds a new way for the Knicks to lose. This year, the combined pressure of Camby’s personal situation and the backlash surrounding recent anti-Semitic comments by point guard Charlie Ward may have proven too much for the Knicks to overcome. That and the offense of ex-Knick Chris Childs, who never played this well in the Garden when he wore the home uniform.