NBA ROUNDUP : Knicks Move Toward Goal, but It’s Still Far Away

There was no champagne, even though the New York Knicks clinched their second Atlantic Division championship in a row Thursday night with a 111-106 victory over the Washington Bullets at Landover, Md.

A division title wasn’t exactly their goal back in November.

“It’s a nice accomplishment, but our minds are far ahead of that,” Coach Pat Riley said. “We have to keep our eyes completely focused on the goal.”

The goal is the NBA championship.

“We’ve won our division. Hooray, hurrah,” said Rolando Blackman, who is only a season off the roster of the Dallas Mavericks, for whom every victory is cause for celebration.

“Sure we’re having a good season, but we’ve got much more work to do. We have higher aspirations.”

Patrick Ewing had 33 points and 13 rebounds and Blackman’s three-pointer with 61 seconds left broke a tie and enabled the Knicks to end a three-game losing streak. They also pulled even with idle Atlanta in the race for the best record in the Eastern Conference.

“We’d like to win that, but all that really means is that we’re home if there’s a seventh (playoff) game,” Riley said. “It didn’t help us last year (against Chicago) because we didn’t get to the seventh game.”

Houston 104, Sacramento 99--Hakeem Olajuwon scored 34 points at Houston and the Rockets set a franchise record with their 56th victory of the season.

The Rockets, who also got career highs of 30 points and 14 rebounds from Robert Horry, won their sixth game in a row and defeated the Kings for the 23rd time in 24 games in the Summit.

Charlotte 112, Orlando 108--Alonzo Mourning, overshadowed statistically by Shaquille O’Neal, made the biggest shot of the game as the Hornets won at Orlando.

Mourning made a 15-foot jump shot over O’Neal, who had scored 12 consecutive points to trim the Hornets’ lead to 109-107 with just under a minute to go.

Charlotte won its fifth in a row and pulled within 2 1/2 games of the Miami Heat for eighth place in the East.

O’Neal led Orlando, which had a four-game winning streak snapped, with 37 points and 16 rebounds.

Utah 101, San Antonio 90--Karl Malone scored 23 points and Felton Spencer had 22 points and 17 rebounds at Salt Lake City as the Jazz completed a five-game sweep of the season series against San Antonio.

Spencer capped a 9-0 run with a three-point play as the Jazz turned a 76-74 edge into an 85-74 lead with 8:06 left.

David Robinson scored 31 points for the Spurs, but he had only six in the fourth quarter before fouling out with 3:19 remaining. Vinny Del Negro scored 15 points, but only three in the second half for San Antonio, which fell four games behind first-place Houston in the Midwest Division race.

Golden State 113, Portland 108--Latrell Sprewell scored eight of his 27 points in the fourth quarter to help power a 32-17 surge that led the Warriors at Oakland.

The victory moved the Warriors one game ahead of the Trail Blazers into sole possession of the sixth playoff spot in the Western Conference.

Sprewell gave Golden State, which trailed 91-81 going into the fourth quarter, its first lead of the game, 101-100, with 5:54 remaining. Portland led by as many as 16 in the third period.

Clyde Drexler led the Trail Blazers with 29 points and Harvey Grant finished with 21.