THE NBA / MARK HEISLER : It Wasn’t Pretty, but It Was Compelling

Let this be said about the 1994 NBA finals:

It may have been the wrong teams and it certainly was the wrong time. They may have been playing a style the league thought it had left in the prehistoric ‘50s.

It was like raising a pit bull as a pet. You know it’s homely and you have to be careful when you’re patting its head, but after a while, you find out you’re getting attached to it.

The Houston Rockets and New York Knicks went at each other so long and so hard, they had to pry them apart to crown a champion. In the end, it was the Rockets. The Knicks may have had limitless heart, soul, guts, spleen and whatever, but this is still basketball and they still keep score in points.

“It was amazing,” said Rocket Coach Rudy Tomjanovich. “I’ve been around a long time, but I don’t remember seeing a series where it was so tight.

“You go back to the Celtic-Laker days, there were blowouts, there were 15-point wins. This one was nip-and-tuck all the way. I’m sure I’ve lost a couple of years off my life, like Pat (Riley) has.”

Riley could have lost a decade after coaching the Knicks through the longest postseason on record, 25 games of a possible 26.

Neither team in the finals scored 100 points, an NBA first. As a matter of fact, neither scored 95 but the games were taut as violin strings. In Games 2 through 5, the lead changed hands in the fourth quarter. In Game 6, the Knicks never got the lead in the last quarter, but John Starks was shooting for the championship in the final seconds.

In Game 7, Starks went two for 18 and shot them out of it.

“This game comes down to making or missing,” said Riley, the yard boss in this quarry. “You either make or you miss. Some games we did. Tonight, we didn’t.”

It was compelling, it was agonizing, it was ponderous as a glacier’s progress.

It was also all but overlooked.

Between the World Cup and the New York Rangers winning the Stanley Cup and the O.J. Simpson case, the Knicks were wondering if they were going to have to buy space to get into their hometown papers.

The night they won Game 5, the police were chasing Simpson all over the freeway system and most of the press corps in Madison Square Garden watched the pursuit on the TVs provided for replays. Several of NBC’s biggest affiliates preempted the game. The ratings were already down 30% from last year but after that they looked like they’d been run over by a bulldozer.

Of course, the Knick players were up to their old tricks.

Starks and Anthony Mason blew off Tuesday’s media session before Game 7 and were fined $10,000 apiece by the league office. The organization was fined another $20,000 for letting the players hide.

Ironically or not, the Knicks were throwing another of their famous parties for the press corps that night, at the NASA Space Center. Their first was a Western-style hoedown. Their team slogan should be The Knicks Are Your Friends (Even If We Won’t Talk To You). OK, they can’t turn their tenacity on and off. Their performance in Game 7 was wonderful. It was everything a basketball team could be, without making any shots.

At halftime, Starks, Patrick Ewing and Charles Oakley, their top three scorers, were a combined four for 16. Somehow, the Knicks were still within 45-43.

After three quarters, they were nine for 29. Somehow, the Knicks were still within 63-60.

Starks, a gamer’s gamer, kept putting them up and they kept clanking off and what was there to say but goodby?

“John almost single-handedly won it for us in Game 6,” said Riley. “You live with your players. You go up with them and you go down with them.

“I don’t want to be remiss in telling our players they played as hard as they could as long as they could. They took it to the ultimate game. There’s no solace in the words that I can give them right now, but I don’t think I’ve ever been prouder of a team in my life.”

On the floor, Commissioner David Stern was going on about the heart, desire, determination, etc., shown by both teams.

“But,” said Stern, preparing to present the Rockets their trophy, “there can only be one champion.”

Yelled someone in the press room: “If that many!”