NBA

This reprieve isn’t enough: Knicks, fans need Game 7

PASSION PLAY: The Knicks came together before a Game 5 victory at the Garden. Now they need to do so one more time in Indianapolis to bring a Game 7 home for their fans (inset). (
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INDIANAPOLIS — The banners hanging from the Garden rafters, the Red Holzman 613 banner, the Willis Reed 19 banner, the 10 Clyde Frazier banner, even the 33 Patrick Ewing banner, they’re all whispering to one another today. They want another Game 7 played out beneath them Monday night. They know what the Garden would look like and feel like and sound like.

Their plea, as the whispering turns into shouting that can be heard as far away as the visiting locker room inside Bankers Life Fieldhouse, is the same plea a basketball-crazed city that has gone 40 springs without a championship makes now:

Bring it home.

Bring the series home. Bring the Pacers home. Bring Game 7 home.

After the Knicks survived the Celtics and captured their first playoff series in 13 years, coach Mike Woodson stood inside the practice gym in Greenburgh and said: “I want to send a shout out to our fans, because this series is strictly for them. It was long overdue.”

This series, this Eastern Conference semifinal series, should be strictly for them as well. Winning this series is long overdue as well.

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Woodson knows it. All of them know it. When you are a Win Now team, Winning Now means more than winning one damn series. It means finding a way to steal one game in Indiana, getting back to the Garden, winning Game 7 and taking your talents to South Beach to challenge champion LeBron James and the Heat.

“You win a title, not for yourselves, but for me, it would be great to bring a title here to New York, man,” Woodson told me 14 months ago. “I think that if that ever happened, man, it would be the most unbelievable experience. Because you got Manhattan, all the surrounding boroughs, man, that would just go bananas if you won one, and that’s all I think about. I don’t think about anything else.”

Woodson is in full blown Vince Lombardi Winning Isn’t Everything It’s The Only Thing mode. Ask Jason Kidd and Amar’e Stoudemire, spectators in the second half of Game 5, about that.

“Those two guys have just got to be ready to play,” Woodson said. “At this point, it’s about winning.”

Rajon Rondo didn’t play against the Knicks. Now the basketball gods have given Indiana’s George Hill a concussion.

“We’re preparing that he is going to play,” Woodson said yesterday. “It doesn’t matter who’s out there.”

Of course it does. D. J. Augustin isn’t Mark Jackson. Or George Hill. Advantage, Knicks.

“We’ve got to continue to apply pressure either way,” Woodson said.

Here is the rest of the How to Win Game 6 blueprint:

“Forty-eight minutes of commitment,” Woodson said on ESPN radio yesterday.

Limit the Pacers’ second-chance points because they have difficulty scoring. Every Knick crashes the boards.

Jump on the Pacers early, make them start sweating a Game 7 at the Garden and take the crowd out of it at the same time.

Twenty more minutes for Chris Copeland. In an ugly series, he can be the difference with his 3-point shooting. He opens the floor up for Melo and Co.

Keep encouraging J.R. Smith.

“He made a very positive step forward,” Woodson said. He’s long overdue for a breakout game.

No whining about the referees. Keep your composure.

Thirty points and a big fourth quarter from Carmelo Anthony.

Woodson has seen this done before as Larry Brown’s assistant when the 2004 champion Pistons dropped a gut-wrenching triple-overtime Game 5 of the Eastern Conference semifinals to the Nets in Auburn Hills.

“We’ve got to win a game on the road,” Brown said at the time. “It’s been done before. We’re going to bounce back from this.”

The Pistons beat the Nets, 81-75, in Game 6 at Continental Airlines Arena.

“We’re a tough team,” Rip Hamilton said. “This is what the playoffs are about — getting to play a Game 7 on your home court.”

Game 7 at The Palace: Pistons 90, Nets 69.

Bring it home.