NBA FINALS : Rockets, Rested but Rusty, Win, 85-78 : Game 1: Houston scores only 13 points in the fourth quarter, but Knicks fail to take advantage.

Son of Choke City, the next generation of indignities for the Houston Rockets, was coming fast Wednesday night at the Summit when who should ride in to save the day for the Houston Rockets but. . . .

No one.

The Rockets were ripe for another embarrassing moment, such as when they blew a 20-point lead to Phoenix earlier in the playoffs and got jumped by the headline writers, but again lived to tell.

They ran out of fuel, ran low on superstars and ran out of offense but did not run out of time, finding enough to recover and beat the New York Knicks, 85-78, in Game 1 of the NBA finals at the Summit.

The guy who usually comes in with the white hat, Hakeem Olajuwon? He made his last field goal with 7:25 left in the third quarter, missed his final seven shots and went zero for four in the fourth quarter. He scored 28 points, but 19 of those came in the first half.

The rest of the team? They clocked out early, too, scoring 13 points in the fourth quarter while going two of 13.

Said Coach Rudy Tomjanovich, probably joking: “We made that many?”

The Rockets’ biggest advantage in their first appearance in the championship series since 1986 was that they played the Knicks, who will never be confused with a team that can spell the word “offense.”

Given the opportunity to make up a 12-point deficit in the fourth quarter and steal a victory on the road, they exploded for 15 points in those dreadful final 12 minutes on six-of-24 shooting, making it the lowest-scoring quarter in a championship series in league history.

“It’s the kind of game that we wanted in the second half,” Knick Coach Pat Riley said. “I thought we definitely began to wear a little bit on them. We made some adjustments that helped us. But when you get this far and work this hard, you’ve got to make some shots.”

To think everyone wondered beforehand whether the Knicks would be exhausted because they were playing on the heels of two consecutive seven-game series, with only two days of to rest since beating Indiana on Sunday night in New New York. They seemed fine, conditioning wise, but it was the Rockets, they of the eight-day R & R since winning the West, who hit the wall.

Houston was up, 77-65, with 8:53 left and seemingly coasting. But they didn’t score again until 5:19 remained, and then it was on a pair of free throws. The Knicks started to reel them in, and the crowd grew antsy.

By the time John Starks made one free throw with 2:13 left--what became an afterthought as he missed 15 of 18 attempts from the field--the Rocket lead was down to 79-76. Houston kept missing, but the Knicks couldn’t take advantage. Their next two possessions ended with Starks’ three-point airball and Greg Anthony’s pass that flew out of bounds 20 feet from the basket.

Finally, with 1:03 to go, the Rockets got another basket, a slam dunk from Otis Thorpe, part of his 14 points and 16 rebounds. That was worth an 82-76 cushion, which held up.

“There is a sense of relief to get the first game out of the way,” Thorpe said. “We have a lot of confidence in our defense. We don’t care if we score in the 70s or get into the 100s. We have confidence just the same.”

Said Olajuwon: “Sitting down a week, we were pretty rusty. I’m just so happy we won. Sitting all week, practicing and waiting, was very difficult. Our timing is so different. . . . I was struggling the whole game to get into the flow.”

Olajuwon finished 10 of 22 from the field but was nine of 13 in the first half. His counterpart in the much-anticipated matchup, Patrick Ewing, had 23 points on 10-of-26 shooting and nine rebounds and had the advantage on defense of not having to worry full time about Olajuwon.

The Knicks attacked him by committee. Ewing, Charles Oakley, Anthony Mason and Charles Smith all got shots at the regular-season most valuable player, but could only hope they had a hand in wearing him down as much as the layoff did. Olajuwon was successful until he wore down.

“It was important to us that he just stuck in there,” Thorpe said. “His shot wasn’t falling, a couple people’s shots weren’t falling. I missed some inside. But at the same time, we hung in there. We hit some big free throws at the end.”