Bad Knick Slide Began Long Ago : NBA playoffs: Upstart Pacers have a chance to win Eastern Conference title tonight in Game 6 at Indianapolis.

There are more secure places where the New York Knicks could be tonight. Like maybe back home, in Central Park at around midnight asking if anyone can change a hundred. And here are the keys to the Mercedes, can you park it somewhere safe?

Instead, they must be in Market Square Arena for Game 6 of an Eastern Conference finals too many people expected them to use as a warm-up for the NBA championship series. Those fans had dubbed the East finals the Knicks vs. the Hicks.

The Knicks are down to the Indiana Pacers, 3-2, and facing the only thing more alarming then Reggie Miller against a soft defense in the fourth quarter. They are facing elimination, questions of what went wrong after years of building for this moment, cries from fans and a Ginsu treatment from the tabloid press, who have already started.

Thursday’s New York Daily News summed up the debacle of the previous night, when a 12-point lead at the start of the fourth quarter became a seven-point loss, with a two-inch bold headline: GAG CITY.

This has come about for more reasons than Miller, even if he did single-handedly outscore the Knicks in the fourth quarter Wednesday at Madison Square Garden in one of the greatest showings in NBA playoff history.

The Knicks were laboring long before coming here last weekend with a 2-0 lead, and long before the collapse started with Patrick Ewing scoring one point in Game 3. This team was outplayed about 70% of the time by the Chicago Bulls in winning the previous series.

Even before that, with something as significant as home-court advantage through the Eastern portion of the playoffs on the line, the Knicks went 6-6 to end the regular season, including losses to Miami, Philadelphia, New Jersey and Charlotte.

On the other hand, it could be worse. It could be over, considering that Miller has the Knicks on the ropes after only two noteworthy quarters, the fourth in Games 4 and 5. Imagine, if he hadn’t started by shooting 41.1% through the third quarter of Game 4 and by making only two of nine three-pointers.

“We simply have our backs against the wall,” Knick Coach Pat Riley said. “The only thing that will come out of this is that we will find out what kind of team we have, what we are about.

“I have a feeling about this team. I simply believe that we are going to get it done. We have to lock in to what we have been locking in to for three years, and maybe this is how it has to be for this team. It’s always been tough, it’s always been harrowing. It has never been easy for us. If this is the way it has to be, then we simply have to get it done.”

Ewing, for one, has no doubt they will.

“The mood is that we are going to come back (to New York) on Sunday,” he said in predicting a Game 7. “We are going to Indiana and win the ballgame and come back.”

The Pacers would like to win tonight, close out the series at home and get a few more days’ rest before opening the championship finals at Houston on Wednesday. Miller has even declared this their Game 7, but the luxury does remain that, after never having been beyond the first round since the ABA merger 18 years ago, they need only to split the next two games to advance.

Welcome to the Indy .500.