Knicks Achieve, Believe : Pro basketball: New York thinks key playoff experience and last year’s loss in finals will pay off in a title this time.

They think the playoffs is their time of year. It is as if the style and manner of the season after the season was built for them rather than the other way around.

They have been this way before. They know how long the playoffs go on, grinding their bodies and pressing on their heads, and they think it gives them an edge. It is their only edge. It is substantial.

They began the playoffs by pulling the wings off the Cleveland Cavaliers, 103-79, Thursday night. It may have been the most complete game the New York Knicks have played all season, and they made it look conclusive. There have been blowouts in the playoffs that were immediately reversed, but this was what the Knicks had been waiting for since the day after the seventh game at Houston last summer.

“Judging by the way this team acted in practice, you could see it was ready,” Herb Williams, the all-seeing observer, said. “You could see the interaction between each other, the way they went about practice. It was upbeat. You can tell when guys are ready to play.”

The playoffs are halfcourt, banging defense and rebounding. They are a battle of wills to reject fatigue--and fear of failure. “If the season is a marathon--and it is--you have to complete that first,” New York Coach Pat Riley said in the aftermath, his shirt fresher than it often is after a game. “When the playoffs begin, it’s like a 16-team race to get to the finals. If you get to the finals, it’s a war.

“We got in the war last year. We didn’t finish it. I believe, if we finish every layup, every quarter, every game, we have a chance.”

That’s coachspeak and Riley is fluent, but that’s the nature of his team. Of course the longer they go in the playoffs the more tired they get. “But you don’t feel it,” Anthony Mason said. “What you feel is anxious and impatience to get going.”

They came within John Starks’ three-pointer, tipped by Hakeem Olajuwon in the sixth game at Houston, of winning the championship last year. They rode a crest to that point, a wave that had been building for years and, to use Riley’s expression, didn’t finish it. Now they have to do it again with a different kind of urgency.

If they don’t win it this year, does Patrick Ewing ever have as good a chance to win a championship? If they don’t win it, does Riley move off this spot to something with less pressure? If they do win, does Riley feel the challenge to try to repeat?

Or is that all irrelevant in the pure competition of trying to win a championship? “Every team that goes to the playoffs has an urgency to win,” Williams said. “You never know what fate may bring you next year.”

The cackling and banter so common before games in the long prelude was missing Thursday night. Players were quiet, or out of sight. Except for Ewing, who sat watching tapes of the Cavaliers, bouncing, bouncing, bouncing a basketball left hand to right hand beneath his thighs, the sound of Biggie Smalls in the headphones covering his ears. Then he went about stretching out the hamstring that hurt him last week.

“What hurt last week doesn’t hurt now,” assistant trainer Tim Walsh said.

Three times last year they went to the seventh and conclusive game of the series; they went to the point of sudden death. Twice they won. “It does make a difference,” Mason said. “We felt that pressure. Mentally it can be wearing.”

Charles Smith recalls the sensation of waking up in the morning and before he had his orange juice his mind went directly to thoughts of going against Scottie Pippen that night, the night before or the next night.

Against the Cavaliers, the magnetic matchup is Derek Harper against Mark Price. If the Cavaliers have any chance, they have to stay close enough for Price in the closing minutes. Instead, Harper--with relief help from Greg Anthony--played Price tighter than the catsuits on the Knicks City Dancers. They rendered him null and void. Harper would hound Price and hound him and guide him into a trap, and the Knicks would be heading the other way.

On successive plays in the third period, the sequence wound up with the ball going to Harper on the far end of the court for scores. The Cavaliers didn’t reach double figures in the second quarter until the closing moments, and the Knicks were demonstrating that they could keep going to Ewing in the post and something good would come from it.

Ewing would make a jump shot. Or he would find Charles Oakley cutting through the lane and get a pretty pass to him. Or he would get the ball outside to Harper. Or the ball would find Smith. Of course, the Cavaliers are severely depleted by injury, so don’t take the final score at face value. Take the Knicks’ manner at face value. As many games as they won, they had an erratic season. Sometimes the energy level just wasn’t there. There is no explanation why.

It is present and accounted for now. Each series last season was a step in a rising crescendo--against the New Jersey Nets, Chicago Bulls, Indiana Pacers and then the final. The Cavaliers don’t present that kind of challenge. The next round, probably against Indianapolis, does. Lose one game at home and the pressure begins to grind. If experience is a real value, that’s when it begins to pay off.

“What you learn is that this game is so quick,” Williams said. “In football they beat each other to death, but they go to a huddle between each play. This game we run into each other, but if you’re not mentally ready to do what you’re supposed to do, you can lose it all very quickly. We can’t not be smarter than we were the year before with what we went through.”

You could look it up: The Lakers, the Detroit Pistons, the Bulls--the repeat champions of the last decade--had to get to the finals and lose before they could win.

The Knicks played their game Thursday night.

“The intensity was there,” Riley said. “Rebounding. Defense. There were at least a dozen instances on the pick and roll . . . “

Even when they looked bad, they looked good. In one stretch of the second quarter, they failed to finish three of four fast breaks. “But I loved the energy,” Riley said.

They have to make it last until summer. They think they know how.