By the time the man forever dubbed The Great One reached New York City, late in his career, he was, by his own admission, less than great every shift he played here.

“I wasn’t the 22-year-old Wayne Gretzky anymore,” the 64-year-old Wayne Gretzky said Thursday, recalling the 35-year-old Wayne Gretzky who reported to Madison Square Garden for the first of the three seasons he played with the Rangers that closed out his career. “I knew it. The fans knew it.”

Gretzky laughed.

“And you’d better believe Larry knew it,” he said.

Gretzky and Larry Brooks, The Post’s longtime hockey writer and columnist who died Thursday morning at age 75 , had already known each other for years, and Brooks had already written a few hundred thousand words on Gretzky — let’s call that one GOAT chronicling anot

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