ONE reason Kurt Thomas could have Alonzo Mourning for lunch over 13 of the best individual minutes the Knicks enjoyed yesterday was because the Knick forward used to smell what the Miami center had eaten for breakfast.

“Sure, it helps I practiced against him for my first year-and-a-half in the league,” said Thomas. “He took me under his wing. I learned how he attacks the basket, turns his feet, turns his shoulder.”

Of course, we would expect that Mourning learned a few things about Thomas, too, specifically how the Knick forward doesn’t turn the other cheek. This guy’s fuse is even shorter than the range of his jumper. When Thomas went for a gratuitous after-the-whistle dunk and tried to avoid falling on Mourning’s foot during the fourth quarter, Thomas’s push almost came to shove.

“I was just trying to protect myself when I came down,” he said. “I wanted to push him off so I didn’t come down on him and turn my ankle.”

Mourning, needing neither the ejection nor a return visit by Jeff Van Gundy to his leg, allowed his anger to dissipate, like the Heat’s chances to take a stranglehold on the series. But Mourning didn’t need any part of Thomas, either. You drop a quarter by one of the guy’s ears and those eyelids start rolling cherries, lemons, and bars.

“Don’t you give me thoseeyes,” an indignant referee once told Thomas, but Kurt – on the birth certificate, surely it’s spelled Curt – insists that The Look most times is benign. Perhaps, but the looks at the basket Mourning never got as the game awaited Charlie Ward’s coup de grace yesterday could have made the “Who You Lookin’ At?” Hall of Fame.

All we know for sure is that the Knicks were peering at a 3-1 series deficit if Thomas, in his time against Mourning, didn’t hold him to one field goal, grab three rare and precious Knick offensive rebounds, beat Otis Thorpe with a baseline move, hit Ward at the basket on a cutter and keep Patrick Ewing on the bench for eight minutes of the fourth quarter.

It was a veritable tour de force by a player whose job is to bring force, which is all this 2-2 series is about. “No matter what, I’m not going to back down,” said Thomas after the 91-83 victory. “I know how to use my legs and body and I just play hard.

“I don’t have the [body] cuts Alonzo has but I’m strong. Some people, it doesn’t matter how hard you work, [the hard body] is not going to come. Maybe one day. I might not be eating right.”

Don’t let him fool you. There’s more iron in Kurt Thomas’s diet than he catches on most of his turnaround jumpers, and this remains one hungry guy. “He is going to play extremely hard and defend to the best of his ability,” said Van Gundy. “The variable is how many offensive rebounds he can get.

“He was on the offensive glass today. Even some that he didn’t get he kept alive. I thought his effort was terrific and really needed.”

Tell that to Pat Riley, who traded Thomas away to Dallas in the Jamal Mashburn deal but had a chance to use his $1.7 million exemption to re-sign Thomas after the lockout. Riley, worried about the ankle problems that cost Thomas almost two full seasons, passed in favor of Clarence Weatherspoon, which must rile the Miami coach during the spare moments when he’s not kicking his own butt for passing up a deal that could have brought him Latrell Sprewell for Dan Majerle and P.J. Brown.

You live and learn in this sporting life. Van Gundy is learning as this series goes along that any minutes he can avoid the Mourning-Ewing matchup are good ones. “[Thomas] has a little more weight on him than Alonzo and can move his feet a little better than Patrick,” said Sprewell.

Ewing had a creditable 12 points and 11 rebounds yesterday, but was toasted by Mourning for 10 field goals. Thomas, on the other hand, had things under control at the point of the game where control was vital. His move and dunk on Thorpe stretched a 71-66 lead to seven. An offensive rebound saved a three-pointer for Allan Houston that boosted the Knick edge to eight.

“If [Mourning] gets deep in the paint, he’s going to be able to shoot that jump hook,” said Thomas. “He’s added that turnaround since I was in Miami.”

One good turnaround yesterday didn’t get the next one down because Thomas wouldn’t allow it. The one basket Mourning managed came when the Heat center lost his dribble and the ball deflected in off Marcus Camby.

That basket was even crazier than the look in Thomas’s eyes when he and Mourning exchanged words late in the game. “I just told him to slide down so I could get my spot,” Thomas smiled at the end of a day when he had given the Knicks a lot more than only fouls, more like everything he had.