By MARC BERMAN

PORTLAND – This one rots. And it doesn’t smell like roses in the Rose City for Mike D’Antoni either after their buzzer-beating loss to the Blazers tonight. He’s an excellent coach, not a great late-game coach. His misjudgement on the final possession with a foul to give on Brandon Roy is alarming.

The Blazers had 4.3 seconds left on an inbounds. In the huddle, D’Antoni doesn’t mention you may want to try to wrap the guy up immediately with a foul to give. That could cost the Blazers another second or two and leave Roy little time to make his moves on the next inbound.

D’Antoni is afraid of getting a continuation call. But referees know the deal and they’re not going to give the opponent something cheap like that to decide a game. Refs realize a team has earned that last non-shooting foul and respect it. Walt Frazier was up in arms.

The Knicks show so much moxie so often and yet they can’t get it done in the last two minutes. That goes for D’Antoni, too, who acted as if a reporter had asked him why the sky is blue after the game when wondering if he thought of putting Nate Robinson back in the game.

His answer was telling, noting Robinson is 5-7 and not a good defender. D’Antoni was so dismissive it told me something else. Told me the Knicks probably aren’t looking to re-sign a player for big bucks who can’t finish games because of his lack of size and defense.