MIAMI – The ’64 Phillies are off the hook. Red Sox fans everywhere are breathing a little easier, though still not forgiving Bill Buckner. And even backers of the Buffalo Bills are pointing at the Heat and laughing, “Choke.”

The 1999-2000 edition of the Heat will go down as a gang that played with as much passion as much sweat and as much determination as anybody. But ultimately, they’ll be remembered as a team with as much success as the early runs of Heat teams.

Up 15 points in the Garden with one half of basketball to go, they blew Game 6 with an offense that seemingly was designed by a dead guy and a Kindergarten kid. Get the ball and heave it. And miss.

Then yesterday, they were home, up nine points in the second quarter. They promptly blew that. And that was just a warm-up for an even nastier fold: a six-point lead with 4:03 remaining in a fourth quarter where they placed offensive execution and free-throw shooting on a par with nuclear physics. The Heat, incredibly, managed to commit three 24-second violations in the fourth quarter. What, did they steal the Nets’ playbook?

And at the line, they were 11-of-21. They moaned and complained they didn’t get the calls. When they got them, they did nothing with them. Hey, maybe the refs figured, why bother?

“I totally agree,” Pat Riley offered when it was suggested his team brought about its own demise at the line. “We were 11-of-21 we missed our first five in the fourth quarter. You’ve got to stand up and knock them down … You’ve got to step up there and you’ve got to make them. The last three minutes of the game, those were the things that let them back in.”

Riley pointed to a devastating turnover early in the quarter. The Heat were up, 71-65, and looking to go up eight. Instead, rookie Anthony Carter lost the ball to ultimate game hero Chris Childs, who turned it into a three-point play. Instead of being up eight, the Heat were ahead three and feeling a lump in the throat.

And everyone knows how it ended. The same way a five-game set ended last year. and the year before that, with the Heat going fishing and the Knicks going on. And despite that, the Heat insisted they were better, sounding an awful lot like Patrick Ewing during the glory days of the Bulls.

“We feel we should be in the Eastern Conference Finals,” P.J. Brown said. “To lose to the same team three years in a row is devastating. Every game was a nail-biter … I don’t know if fate has anything to do with this.

“This series, the Heat lost it.”

Yup, they choked it away.