NBA FINALS : The Waiting Finally Will End Tonight : Game 7: After the distraction of a two-day break, the Knicks and Rockets will determine a champion.

What a fitting place for Game 7 of the NBA finals.

The Summit.

The New York Knicks and Houston Rockets both want to get to the summit, so they will play there. One game. Winner take all. Tonight.

“This is what you play for,” Rocket guard Kenny Smith said. “To get to this position where the world’s a stage.”

The curtain goes up on Act VII because the Rockets got the most traditional of Father’s Day gifts on Sunday, a tie. Their 86-84 victory made it a 3-3 series and provided only the 14th Game 7 in the 47 years of the championship series and the first since the Lakers beat the Detroit Pistons at the Forum in 1988. Then came the tough part.

Waiting.

The usual one-day break, in place every time except between Games 3 and 4, became two, because that’s what NBC wanted. That meant double the practices, double the buildup, double the anticipation among players and in a city waiting for its first title beyond the World Hockey Assn. or the American Football League.

“It’s crazy,” Knick Derek Harper said. “The waiting, I think, is the toughest part of this. I don’t even like to think about it. I woke up (Tuesday) thinking that the game was (Tuesday night), and I think it was simply because I was hoping. I’m so anxious for it. I was kind of like in a daze because it seemed like I thought about it all night. There were times I got up in the middle of the night and all I could think about was the basketball game. Sooner or later, it’ll come to an end and we’ll be champions and all of this will be a lot of fun, to think about what you went through.”

Said New York Coach Pat Riley: “This is the ultimate game. The seventh game is almost a generic phrase. The seventh game means something in all sports, except for football and the NCAA tournament. It’s final. It’s the end. It’s over with. . . . All of us have, in our own line of work, reached down as deep as we can. The seventh game is the final chapter.

“People are saying this does not have the great theater or drama of the other finals. They’re not feeling what the players and coaches are feeling. There’s enough theater and drama out there to last a lifetime.”

The home team is 11-3 in Games 7 of the finals--the Washington Bullets of 1978 were the last to beat the odds--and has won 19 Games 7 in any playoff series since Philadelphia won at Boston for the 1982 Eastern Conference title.

A series thought to be devoid of any of the usual interest--so say the TV ratings--suddenly has something over so many of the others that have come before it. This is Game 7, something no junior skyhook by Magic Johnson at Boston Garden in 1987, no hail of three-pointers by Michael Jordan at Chicago Stadium in 1992, no series-winning basket by John Paxson at America West Arena in ’93 can match.

“This is fun pressure,” Rocket Coach Rudy Tomjanovich said. “The other kind of pressure is you’ve lost eight in a row and the fans are booing you, things like that. This is excitement.

“Waiting is very hard. I just thank God we don’t have to go through the national anthem as coaches. We’re in the back. Just waiting and waiting and waiting. I’d like that we could come out and get the starters out there and let’s go play.”

The Knicks played a seven-game series to beat the Bulls in the Eastern Conference semifinals, played a seven-game series to beat the Pacers the next round, and now are heading into their 107th game of the regular season and playoffs, a record.

And the person to coach the only team that won three consecutive seven-game series to claim the championship? Riley, with the Lakers in 1988. He has also coached the three most recent Games 7 of the finals, in ’84 and ’88 with the Lakers and now the Knicks.

NBA Notes

Hakeem Olajuwon heads into the finale easily outscoring, 27.2-19.2, and outshooting, 52%-35.7%, Patrick Ewing in the center showdown. But Ewing is averaging more rebounds, 12.8-9, and blocked shots, 4.67-4. “I think both of us have played well,” Olajuwon said. “Both of us have risen to the occasion, accepted the challenge. But now what’s important is which team wins the championship. It’s bigger than individuals. It’s not the battle. Now is the war.”