The shot fell.

Allan Houston flipped a lunging, one-handed runner that carried the fate of two teams and two seasons in its precarious arc. As the shot caromed high off the front of the rim, 15,000 pairs of eyes in Miami Arena watched it hang like an omen above the basket.

Houston was missing in action all afternoon. With just 10 points on 4-of-12 shooting to that point, he had done an admirable job of wiping away all positive memories of his 30-point effort in the Knicks' Game 5 clincher one year previous.

An 86 percent free-throw shooter, he had even managed to shank an attempt earlier in the game. With his shaved head, he looked like a relic from playoff losses past, when the Knicks, in a New York rite of spring, would buzz-cut their locks as a gesture of the oft-discussed intangible "team unity."

It was a poignant anachronism, an unwanted reminder of a decade of futility and frustration.

Houston hears a consistent stream of voices--in the New York dailies and on its talk radio programs--which call for him to become the superstar his multimillion-dollar contract demands. Patrick Ewing is past his prime, they whisper. Houston is the Knick of the future.

With a make, Houston would join the pantheon of Big Apple post-season heroes, from Bucky Dent to Stephane Matteau. With a miss, he would join the ghost of Charles Smith in the graveyard of unfulfilled hoop dreams.

"I got a friendly bounce from up above," Houston said.

I've always suspected God was a Knicks fan. Now I have proof.

The shot fell.

Alonzo Mourning, by all accounts the most deserving MVP candidate in the league, watched Houston's desperation attempt drop downward toward the paint. Mourning blossomed under Pat Riley's tutelage into one of the NBA's finest all-around centers, and almost single-handedly carried the Heat to the best record in the East.

But Mourning had spent this extralong off-season toting around the painful memory of his temper tantrum with Larry Johnson in Game 4 of his 1998 series with the Knicks. After the scuffle, Riley reportedly told his franchise player, "You know, you just cost us the season."

If Houston's shot would only rim out, Mourning would have another round to prove to the pundits and the NBC talking heads that he has mastered his much-maligned rage, that he is no longer an immature punch-thrower, and that he was ready to take up the mantle of the Bulls.

"Regardless of the outcome, I still feel we're a better team than they are," Mourning said.

That and a dollar fifty, `Zo, will buy you a ride on the E train to Madison Square Garden.