Awful spectacle as N.Y. KO’d hapless Hawks

ATLANTA – The Knicks and Hawks raced up and down the floor like fingernails on a blackboard.

Allan Houston missed his first five shots, made one of eight. Steve Smith hit two of 16. The Knicks sizzled to 38 per cent shooting, the Hawks to 29 per cent.

Kurt Thomas bounced a dunk off the rim. And that was as close as he came in the first half. Dikembe Mutombo took it the hole, a black hole, and hit nothing but iron. The next time, contested only by his offensive ineptitude, he laid it up soft and missed.

Holy Hawthorne Wingo! It looked like basketball when the ball had stitches, and at times, was enough to leave you in stitches, if you didn’t take the required 24 seconds to remind yourself what was at stake.

The Knicks won the worst basketball game ever played last night, 77-70. Playoffs, regular season, JV. Anytime. They set Atlanta back 2-0 coming to New York and with help from the Hawks, basketball back to when it was volleyball and, if last night was any indication, should have stayed that way. If you’re going to blame anybody, don’t start with Steve Smith, but Naismith.

We mean, there was reason to believe that the Hawks, the league’s best defensive team torched for 100 points by the Knicks in Game 1, would buckle down. The Knicks themselves had every expectation that after a visit to the candy store in Game 1, visits to the dentist would resume in Game 2. “I really think the rest of the series will be more like what everybody thought coming in,” said Allan Houston.

But this was absolutely hideous. It looked like a lockout had just ended. And that another one should soon begin. Each team turned the ball over 11 times in the first half. And that was the good half.

The ironic thing is that the only guy who kept the Hawks alive in the second half was Ed Gray, a reserve from Atlanta’s bench from hell. Inserted to fruitlessly chase Latrell Sprewell, Gray scored 13 points, a lot considering that otherwise, the only depth the Hawks’ have is found in Dikembe Mutombo’s voice.

Facing the big test, the Atlanta center yesterday morning had gone to the testosterone. “Yes, we will win the game tonight,” he boomed. When your team is courting trouble, there’s not much use for the treble. The Hawks last night were determined to set a different tone, starting with baritone. Then it turned out that all the gravel in his voice spilled onto the floor, making it extremely difficult to dribble.

It had started well enough for Atlanta. Mookie Blaylock hit three early shots, the Hawks took the ball to the basket hard and took a 13-2 lead. Then Jeff Van Gundy pushed the Sprewell button early, the Hawks started bouncing passes off each other’s backs and the Knicks worked their way back. For a while we couldn’t tell to what, but gradually, painfully, they took control.

“We didn’t play our A-game,” said Patrick Ewing, “but we were able to pull it out. “Our bench gave us a big lift.’

Asked yesterday morning for the key to changing the Atlanta fortunes, Atlanta Coach Lenny Wilkens had said: “Play better defense. And that’s all that I’m telling you. The rest you have to watch for yourself tonight.”

Good lord, hadn’t we suffered enough?

“I must help my teammates set the tone from the beginning,” said Mutombo. The Hawks, with no bench, had to go deep a different way, ready to rumble like the rumble in their big man’s throat. “I have business to do,” said Mutombo, and had made it sound so urgent.

At the end of 60 minutes, the only recourse was to call The Better Business Bureau.