Knick Status Not Appealing : NBA playoffs: Despite overflow of emotion in Garden, Miami finally wears down New York, 95-90, to force Game 7.

NEW YORK — Hell hath no wrath like a Knick fan in a $1,000 suit and a $1,250 seat whose heroes have just been banished by an unfeeling commissioner.

There were 19,763 Knick fans at Madison Square Garden on Friday night, cheering, chanting rude things about Pat Riley, watching film clips on the scoreboard, parts of every inspirational movie, it seemed, since “Lassie Come Home.” But when the cheers died and the videotape ran out, the New Yorkers were still undermanned and the Miami Heat ground them down, 95-90, to tie the series, 3-3.

Patrick Ewing and Allan Houston, the Knicks’ top scorers, suspended for this one, will return for Sunday’s Game 7 while Larry Johnson and John Starks serve their sentences.

On balance, the Knicks will be stronger, but they’ll be in Miami, where the atmosphere is decidedly less supportive.

“Oh, the crowd was the way we thought it was going to be--vicious,” Heat guard Tim Hardaway said. “They was vicious out there.

“I couldn’t have gone back home to Chicago if they would have beat us, man. All my boys back home would have said, ‘You let nine guys beat you out, in the playoffs, when it counted.’ ”

Nine guys, nine guys, nine guys, that was all you heard here Friday.

A metropolis rallied around its stunted heroes. Knick management pulled out all the stops, running a tape of the sainted Willis Reed, grimacing on the floor in pain in the 1970 finals against the Lakers, followed by Willis hobbling out for Game 7, making a jumper over Wilt Chamberlain and all the Knicks dancing off the floor after winning.

Then “May, 1997,” flashed on the screens, “Nine men, one mission.”

Then came shots of each of the nine remaining Knicks, all looking determined. Of course, a determined-looking Walter McCarty or Scott Brooks might not strike terror in opponents’ hearts, but in Madison Square Garden, it was Goose Bump City.

Then the coup de grace: “This game is dedicated,” it said on the screens, “to everybody who believes.”

The Knicks believed. Inspired, they jumped ahead and stayed there through the first half, stretching it to 53-44 midway through the third quarter.

“I expected, with what happened in the events of the last couple of days, a very emotional start on their part,” said Riley, the Miami coach. “They simply outhustled us, they got all the loose balls. They outrebounded us by 13 in the first half. But we stayed close enough.”

They got closer and closer. Hardaway hadn’t done much since making the game-winner in Game 2, going 13 for 49 since, but Friday he made eight of 17 shots and scored 20 points.

With their full lineup, the Knicks could put Charles Oakley on Alonzo Mourning and let Patrick Ewing come over to contest Mourning’s shots, a scheme that sawed Mourning down to 44% in the series. Friday, with no Ewing to worry about, Mourning shot 10 for 18, scored a series-high 28 points and had no trouble staying on the floor, accumulating only three fouls in 44 minutes.

The Heat went ahead early in the fourth quarter, 76-74, when Oakley drove--another emergency maneuver. In normal times, Oakley stands there like an oak until someone throws him the ball for a jump shot. Not surprisingly, he missed a left-handed layup, starting a fastbreak that led to a Voshon Lenard layup.

What could the Knicks do but . . . call timeout and show the Reed clip again?

Here it came, the grimace, jumper, players dancing, nine players, one mission, clips of the nine . . .

It might have been inspirational, but it wasn’t magic. The Knicks came out of their timeout, and who wound up driving to the hoop again and throwing up another awkward left-handed miss but Oakley, triggering another fastbreak and a Dan Majerle layup.

Then Buck Williams went in for a dunk but Mourning and Isaac Austin rose up to block the shot, triggering another break and a Hardaway layup and an 80-74 lead.

Knick Coach Jeff Van Gundy called the block on Williams “huge.” Someone asked Mourning later which of the two Heat players did it.

“I don’t care who blocked it,” Mourning snorted. “It got blocked.”

The Knicks refused to accept any solace later, not for the missing players, or Starks’ bout of food poisoning earlier in the day. Starks got only 16 shots, made only six and scored 15 points, but said he had felt fine.

“Obviously, when you have players out from both teams, it has an impact,” Van Gundy said, “but we had more than enough to win it. We made a good effort, but we cannot be satisfied with the effort. We had enough to win and we should have won.”

He had enough players to form a team, anyway, just not a winning one.

Not to worry, he’ll have a different team Sunday.