THE NBA /MARK HEISLER : It’s Been No Life of Riley for Knicks

They call him coach: It hasn’t exactly been a honeymoon for Pat Riley in New York, but it has been in character.

Riles has been intense.

The Knicks are day-and-night better.

After a 4-5 start, they won six games in a row, giving up fewer than 100 points in all, winning new respect from skeptics who had written off the Knick personnel.

Said a rough-and-tumble New York columnist: “Anybody who can make this bunch of slugs look good has got to have something on the ball.”

Indeed, Riley’s cast has a shortcoming or two.

Xavier McDaniel, acquired to play the low post--in other words to be James Worthy East--has evolved into a perimeter player in his golden years. X himself rates his play as a Knick “D-minus.”

Charles Oakley is one-dimensional to the point of tipping over. He averages 11 rebounds--and 5.9 points--a game.

Riley spent the preseason building up Mark Jackson, then gave promising rookie Greg Anthony more playing time.

Anthony proceeded to shoot 32% without showing much as a playmaker.

Thus it should come as no surprise that the Knicks struggled.

After a 17-point loss to the Spurs in San Antonio, Riley held consecutive 3-hour 45-minute practices.

Asked about it, he went off.

“Do I ask you guys why you write for eight hours?” Riley told Knick beat reporters.

“Let me work, would you? Let me work.”

The next night at Houston, the Knicks scored 79 points and lost.

After that, they won six games in a row.

Murmured Riley: “Maybe there’s something to be said about that conditioning.”

More will surely be said, like will he burn his players out by March?

For whomever needed proof, however, Riley is finally getting the chance to demonstrate he can coach without Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson. However badly he and the Lakers parted, they wouldn’t have gone as far without him.

MONEY PLAYER I

Few reputations have been resurrected faster than Patrick Ewing’s.

Until this season, reporters covering the Knicks maintained that Ewing wasn’t a clutch player. This season, he has already won three games with late shots, and all has been forgiven.

On both sides.

Ewing spent last summer trying to force a trade, turning down a raise to $5.5 million.

He recently accepted a deal that will give him $3 million, $3.3 million, $3.5 million, $4 million, then $9.4 million in the final two seasons.

The Knicks thus avoided the fire-sale trades they were contemplating last summer. They have four years to wheel and deal before Ewing’s numbers blow out their salary cap.

MONEY PLAYER II: LAUNDERED FUNDS

Boston’s Robert Parish was getting taped before the game against the Miami Heat when he was handed his paycheck.

Parish dropped it inside his uniform jersey, forgot about it and played the entire game with it there.

Said the Celtics’ Brian Shaw: “It was soaking wet at the end.”

Of course, it’s a coincidence but Parish shot 13 for 16 and scored 31 points, his season high.

BAD BOYS, WORSE BOYS

Detroit’s Chuck Daly started the season with a front line of Bill Laimbeer, Orlando Woolridge and John Salley.

Now he uses William Bedford, Mark Aguirre and Dennis Rodman.

Neither trio has been a big success. The Pistons, 32-9 at home last season, are 5-6.

“I don’t know which way to go,” Daly said. “Every night, it goes a little bit different. One guy plays well. Then another guy plays well. The bottom line is we just can’t get 100 points. No matter what the heck we do, we can’t get 100 points.”

Piston players are grumbling about General Manager Jack McCloskey dumping James Edwards and Vinnie Johnson, or 25 points a game.

They are unimpressed with the acquisitions of Woolridge, Darrell Walker and Brad Sellers.

Joe Dumars told the Flint (Mich). Journal that a Piston assistant coach approached him last week, asking if he would consider a trade to the Clippers--for Danny Manning.

Dumars, stung, scored 32 points in the next game. The Pistons still didn’t hit 100 and lost at home to Indiana.

PHENOM, PAST DUE

Kevin Willis, the eighth-year Atlanta forward/center, threatened to crash stardom seven seasons ago.

His flameout is usually blamed on bad hands, short arms and short attention span.

Suddenly, he’s blossoming again, or exploding. His average of 17.6 rebounds a game is the highest since the 24-year-old Moses Malone posted a 17.8 in 1979. In a nine-game stretch, Willis averaged 21 rebounds, including his 31-board game at Dallas.

“This is no fluke, by any means,” Willis said.

Willis earns a paltry $760,000 a year.

Providentially for the Hawks, they signed him to a four-year, $12-million extension a year ago.

Said Hawk President Stan Kasten, perhaps giddy at his acumen: “Everybody was patting him on the head for taking 20 rebounds. I went in (the locker room) and I kicked him! He fell on the floor laughing.

“But I told him, ‘Eight years! Eight . . . years and you’ve had the talent to do this all the time! You should be ashamed of yourself!’ ”

GUT CHECK

It’s not for the Lakers, who have already passed theirs.

It’s for you, Laker fans.

It may be a tribute to the team, but there was a tendency to regard the recent nine-game winning streak as merely the Lakers “finding another way to win.”

Actually, it was remarkable.

It was less business as usual, more like Loyola Marymount’s run in the 1990 NCAA tournament, in which grief knits a team into more than it was.

“People are going to look at our record,” Byron Scott said after the most amazing victory of all, the rally from 15 points down at Miami without Vlade Divac or Elden Campbell, “and say, ‘Heck, that’s the Lakers, they’re supposed to win.’

“At this particular time, with the teams we’ve played and the people we lost, that’s not true. We’re winning games on determination, guts and heart.”

This isn’t a short tournament, but a long season. Divac may miss much of it.

Heart counts, but so do legs and biceps.

Whatever comes the Lakers’ way, it won’t come easy.

FACES AND FIGURES

Nobody steps up to shoulder responsibility like Sacramento General Manager Jerry Reynolds and not just because he’s had more practice. Said Reynolds of trading Pervis Ellison: “What can I say? We screwed up again.” The Kings got Eric Leckner and Bob Hansen, both since traded. They also got a No. 1 draft choice that became Anthony Bonner, a promising player but not as promising as Ellison, who is averaging 20 points, 12 rebounds and 2.6 blocks for the Washington Bullets. And Reynolds, on drafting Billy Owens with the third pick, rather than Dikembe Mutombo: “Let’s face it, we all screwed up on Mutombo, letting him slide to No. 4 (the Denver Nuggets’ selection). But don’t believe it when Nelly (the Golden State Warriors’ Don Nelson) says we wanted Mitch Richmond and two No. 1 picks (for the Kings’ choice). It’s just his way of saving face. All we wanted was one of those picks and Richmond. Nelly just doesn’t want anyone to think he screwed up, too.”

Of last season’s eight 50-game winners, only the Chicago Bulls can be termed a great power. They’re so impressive that reporters around the country were--playfully--checking the schedule to see when the Bulls’ winning streak would break the Lakers’ record 33-game streak. That was before the Philadelphia 76ers ended Chicago’s streak at 14 games, 103-100, Saturday night. Bull Coach Phil Jackson on his team’s 6-0 West Coast swing: “It was a celebration for us. We had a chance to march through what everybody thinks is the best division in the league.” The Bulls are leading the NBA in shooting, at 52%. More to the point, they’re No. 3 in defense, holding opponents to 44.5%. Oops: Bull General Manager Jerry Krause, burning with indignation at the book, “The Jordan Rules,” in which many Bull players rip him, spied a magazine writer interviewing Jackson on the team bus. Said Krause: “What are these whores doing on the bus?” Jackson then introduced Krause to David Halberstam, a Pulitzer Prize winner for his coverage of the war in Vietnam.

Mood swing: The Seattle SuperSonics went 4-1 on an Eastern trip, came home and went 1-4. Why are they so erratic? Try point guard Gary Payton, who averaged 14 points and shot 67% on the road, then dropped to seven points and 37% at home. . . . The Cleveland Cavaliers’ Mark Price made his first 32 free throws this season, running his record to 121 of 124 dating to the 1990 playoffs. That’s 97.6%. . . . Sunrise: In Cotton Fitzsimmons’ never-ending quest for a lineup, he started power forward Tim Perry, and the Phoenix Suns went 7-1. Perry, a lottery pick in 1990 and a disappointment until now, averaged 16 points, nine rebounds and 2.6 blocks while shooting 63%.

There’ll never be another you: Milwaukee’s Del Harris, one of the league’s most underrated coaches, bumped himself upstairs to full-time general manager last week, having persuaded owner Herb Kohl to accept longtime assistant coach Frank Hamblen as his successor. Kohl wanted Mike Dunleavy to succeed Harris, but Jerry West got there first. Opposing coaches considered Harris’ teams among the craftiest and best prepared in the NBA. Harris, however, thought the Bucks got no respect, coming from a small market, and was always figuring out new ways to illustrate it. After his last game, Harris joked that Danny Schayes, his Jewish center who is in frequent foul trouble, “should complain to the Anti-Defamation League.”