From Miami’s viewpoint, it was not a case of the Knicks taketh. It was more of the Heat giveth away.

And to a man, the Heat gang shook their head and expressed frustration and anger over one of – if not the – key game stats: 19 turnovers that led to 28 Knicks points. So words and phrases such as “careless” or “sloppy” or “mitts of a stone cold dead kangaroo” kept cropping up in post-game conversations.

“The difference was our turnovers,” sighed Dan Majerle, who was turnover blameless – no turnovers in 40 minutes. “They play aggressively, but it wasn’t them. They weren’t any more aggressive than they usually are. We just did a bad job of taking care of the ball, whether it be on double teams, kicking the ball out or just being careless with the dribble or the entry pass. We know what kind of defense they’re going to play. It’s going to be pressure, in your face, coming down and help, and you’ve just got to make the right play.”

Which is not dribbling the ball off you foot, standing in the lane for a full minute or throwing the ball straight into the hands of the opponent, which the Heat did with some impressive regularity.

“The turnovers, half of them were just unconscionable of not being able to deal with what I felt was some pressure, but not the kind of pressure that would force you to turn the ball over,” said Pat Riley. “The mind blowing part of it, to me, is that we are still right there if we made some free throws. And we could have had a two-point game if we could have got one rebound.”

But gauging by how things were going, the Heat would have gotten said endgame rebound and likely bopped it off the head of a concessionaire selling those puffy hands.

“We made some dumb mistakes,” Tim Hardaway moaned. “A lot of unforced turnovers.”

The most flagrant offender on the day for the Heat was Alonzo Mourning, who committed nine turnovers all by his lonesome, with five of them coming in the second quarter. You just about name it, Mourning did it: bad pass, offensive foul, walking, three seconds, fumbled pass. Hey, there was variety, OK?

“I don’t think it was anything they did,” Mourning said. “It was just the decisions that I made personally. In a tough series like this, you’ve almost got to be mistake free. Today, we definitely weren’t.”

And it’s not a good idea to wear a tin hat in a thunderstorm or flash lots of jewelry on the subway at night.

“They played great defense, but a lot of it has to do with us,” said Jamal Mashburn, another turnover-free starter. “We know what we have to do. We’ve been playing 90 games together. We can’t turn the ball over in an important series where possessions are so important.”

The Knicks were most receptive to the Heat’s generosity. They played passing lanes well and more than once got their desired uptempo through Heat blunders.

“It got them to get out on the break a little more to get the fast break points,” Majerle said. “Any time you turn the ball over as much as we did, it’s hard to play good defense when they get out and run.”

And it’s hard to play good offense when you’re giving the ball away.