This tango has been ongoing for three years running, with no sign of change. Win, lose, win, lose. Momentum be damned.
In the last 14 playoff games between the Knicks and Heat, the teams have almost always taken turns flip-flopping, alternating wins and losses with every game.
The only time one team has broken through with a two-game winning streak was in 1998, when the Knicks won the final two games to win the first-round series in five games. Since then, the winner has lost the next time out nine consecutive times.
“I told you we’re evenly matched,” Latrell Sprewell said.
Can’t anyone here stand prosperity?
Apparently not. Miami put itself in a sweet spot by re-capturing the home-court advantage it lost with Friday night’s 77-76 escape-job victory at the Garden. But as wildly even and hotly-contested as this series always is, it is also remarkably consistent in the way the ebb and flow proceeds. The Knicks answered back with yesterday’s 91-83 victory, sending the series back to Miami even at 2-2, making this a best-of-three fight to the finish.
“You got to love it,” Chris Childs said. “This is what it’s all about. Everybody talks about how boring this series is. Neither team is going to give up anything easy, and that’s the way the game is supposed to be played. They’re playing hard, we’re playing hard, and once again, it comes down to this.”
It always comes down to this. With history as a guide, it is the Knicks’ turn to feel good about themselves, to allow that much-hyped “sense of urgency” to filter back to the Heat. Pat Riley now has two full days to work that motivational magic before Wednesday’s Game 5, which figures to be the game that determines which way this series is headed.
“We just got to get the next one,” Sprewell said. “The team that’s going to win two games in a row is obviously going to control this series. We have to do that and feel like our backs are to the wall. We need to get that next game down there. It all comes down to who wins Game 5. That would be the biggest game of the series so far.”
