TKO in Fight Night at Garden

The intense feud simmering between former teammates Alonzo Mourning and Larry Johnson could not have spilled over at a worse time.

And now it’s costing them and respective teams.

As expected, the NBA acted swiftly and Friday suspended the Heat’s Mourning and the Knicks’ Johnson for two games each for fighting with 1.4 seconds remaining in Thursday’s 90-85 New York victory at Madison Square Garden.

Mourning was fined $20,000 for throwing the first punch, and Johnson was fined $10,000. New York’s Chris Mills, who left the area near the bench, was suspended for one game and fined $2,500.

This means the teams--tied 2-2 in the best-of-five first-round series--will head into Sunday’s deciding game at Miami without their most effective big men.

And while it wasn’t a carbon copy of last year’s bench-clearing melee, the fracas was just another wild episode in the Miami-New York rivalry. Last year, five Knicks and one Heat player were suspended after a fight at the end of Game 5 in the conference semifinals.

“It was deja vu, unfortunately,” Knick General Manager Ernie Grunfeld said.

Not quite. This time, the penalties appeared to be a bit more evenly distributed.

“This hurts both teams,” Miami guard Tim Hardaway said. “They lost their best player down low. We lost our defensive stalwart.”

The highly publicized incident was just another low moment for the NBA this season, in which various misdeeds were highlighted by Latrell Sprewell choking Coach P.J. Carlesimo.

As for the Johnson-Mourning scrap, it turned even more bizarre when Knick Coach Jeff Van Gundy dashed onto the court and grabbed Mourning’s leg, clinging to it while he was being dragged across the floor.

“He looked like a jockey who fell off a horse and didn’t know to stop hanging on,” Mills said.

Noting that Mourning is 6 feet 10, the 5-7 Van Gundy said: “I’m not an idiot. I wasn’t trying to attack anyone.”

Obviously, the makeup of the series changed, since Mourning and Johnson were the frontcourt players who have had the most impact.

Johnson, stepping up with Patrick Ewing still nursing a broken wrist, averaged 20.8 points and 7.3 rebounds in the series. Mourning was averaging 19.3 points and 8.5 rebounds with 10 blocks.

“If we expect Tim Hardaway to get 45 points, we’re going to lose the game,” Miami Coach Pat Riley said. “We need four or five guys to give us something.”

The Knicks said Ewing will not play, but the Heat did not necessarily believe he would sit out. Ewing, though, was pressed into unexpected action when he helped keep his teammates from leaving the bench in Game 4.

It was no surprise animosity flared between Mourning and Johnson, though the timing was unexpected. The two players did not get along when they were teammates with the Charlotte Hornets three years ago.

More recently, they sparred on Feb. 1 at the Garden, and both received technicals.

Now the personal rivalry has moved to a new level.

Said Riley, on the series: “I asked the league what they thought, their impressions of the series thus far. They thought it was nothing out of the norm. There was a lot of talk, a couple of slit throats [the gestures], but nothing out of the ordinary.”

Times wire services contributed to this story.