Mike Wise of the New York Times: Game 5 melees and Game 7 classics. The back and forth in the newspapers. History. Animosity. Everything that makes for a genuine backyard scrap in sports.

Only Jeff Van Gundy and Charlie Ward remain from Riley's days in New York, and for Miami, only Mourning and a select few were there from the beginning of the rivalry in the mid-1990's. What you now have mostly are franchises in transition, trying to catch up to the teams that have passed them.

There is a reason the Knicks will struggle to make the playoffs this season unless they make a blockbuster deal. They have been very good for a while. But like the San Francisco 49ers in the N.F.L., their players grew old, the free-spending and salary-cap maneuvers came back to haunt them and they finally stopped reloading and started rebuilding.