THE NBA / MARK HEISLER : Knicks Ready for Storm After Game 3 Loss

Minutes after the New York Knicks lost Sunday night, the three local tabloids began thinking up their back-page headline, looking for that perfect bombshell. One could only imagine what they might come up with:

From the New York Daily News: “IT’S ALL OVER!”

From the New York Post: “STICK A FORK IN ‘EM!”

From Newsday: “METS BEAT EXPOS, 5-4”

Or something like that. Gotham longs to fall head over heels for Pat Riley’s Knicks but . . . can’t . . . quite commit. One moment, the local darlings are on the brink of something big, as they were when they won at Houston on Friday. The next, the knuckleheads fall flat as they did in Sunday’s 93-89 loss to the Rockets.

The last time, the Knicks lost in New York, Game 5 against the Indiana Pacers, the News trotted out “GAG CITY” and the Post went with “CHOKERS.”

If you’re a Knick, the lesson is clear: win or else. Since Sunday didn’t turn out so well, here comes “or else.”

“It’s different here than other places,” said Charles Smith, who has reason to know, having been groomed in ambient anonymity in the Sports Arena only to become ground zero in Madison Square Garden.

“We as players, we just stick with one another. There’s no shower before the storm. It just comes down. You know that you just have to deal with it, forget about it, try to ignore it and do what you have to do.”

What’s going on is the last all-out, downtown newspaper war with one threadbare NBA finalist caught in the cross-fire.

In New York, the beloved Knicks are still the ’70 champions with Red, Clyde and the Captain (Red Holzman, Walt Frazier and Willis Reed, respectively). They were teamwork personified. New Yorkers thought their ascent symbolized something about urban America and would Make Things Better. People said those kinds of things back then and if they learned better, they still love those oldies but goodies.

Today’s Knicks are an odorless, flavorless crew with just enough personality for a photo-op. Their star, Patrick Ewing, lives across the river in a condo in Ft. Lee, N.J., and after the season, goes “home” to Washington, D.C. He does few interviews and rarely consents to talk even to the house-owned Madison Square Garden network. Frazier, now a Knick announcer and still the most colorful personality employed by the franchise, has called Ewing “kind of aloof.”

The rest of the Knicks are hard-working guys who are with the program, give or take one Anthony Mason. They’re polite but say little more than what Riley has told them after the game.

Through the years, Riley watchers have delighted in putting together glossaries of his latest terms. In the ‘80s with the Lakers, it was “making a statement” and “peripheral opponents.”

Now “come with more force” pops up most nights. Sometimes when an ace mimic like Greg Anthony is running through Riley’s cliches, you’re tempted to look behind him to see if Riles is back there, like Shari Lewis with Lamb Chop.

New York, like any other burg, would forgive anything of champions, but the Knicks, 60-game winners last season, were torpedoed by injuries to Smith, Doc Rivers and John Starks. Now they have all they can do to score 90 points and can never, ever let anyone outwork them. When they do, they get Sunday night.

“Game 5 against Indiana, we had a problem,” said Riley, alluding to Reggie Miller’s 25-point fourth-quarter. “Game 7 (against the Pacers), we were down 12. Game 1 of this series, we were down 14.

“I don’t know the answer . . . but we have not played with the kind of intensity until it’s almost a desperate situation.”

Of course, the opponents want to win, too, and sometimes, like the Rockets on Sunday, they’re the ones feeling desperate. The Rockets took it to the Knicks all night and when their little cool breeze, Sam Cassell, dropped that hammer on the home team, it was a fitting finish for Rudy Tomjanovich’s characters, who passed a big character test.

Rudy T runs a Riley-style program, too, so if Friday’s basketball was stirring, the quotes, as they have been all week, were Pablum.

Hakeem Olajuwon, asked about Cassell, said he doesn’t consider him a rookie any more.

Asked when he thought Cassell began to step forward, Hakeem repeated that Cassell isn’t a rookie any more.

Cassell said this was a team victory and they were taking it one game at a time.

The Knicks dressed and cleared out fast. Hello desperation, their old friend.