Bloodied and bandaged, having ravaged each other over the years with some of the most beautifully ugly basketball you'll ever see, these two limping franchises now stagger into Madison Square Garden with their immense pride but little else.
The Knicks and Heat play tonight, if you care. Remember when Heat-Knicks used to matter more than just about anything in this sport? Now it is a yawning afterthought, the fresher legs in Orlando, Milwaukee, Charlotte, Toronto and Philadelphia having kangaroo-bounded past in the fast lane as Miami and New York were busy savaging each other in the emergency lane until each broke down.

It feels like these two franchises wrecked each other. They poured so much passion into their rivalry, on the court and in the front office, that both look old and spent now. They've invested so much fight in beating up each other that they don't have much left for anyone else. You began to see the decline last year, when both exited meekly in the first round of the playoffs against teams with markedly more energy.

New York and Miami have coveted the same players so often -- Chris Childs, Brian Grant, Latrell Sprewell, Rod Strickland, Kurt Thomas, Howard Eisley -- that they have made some bad and expensive decisions just to keep said players out of the rival uniform. Giving Grant $80 million after New York fawned over him represents as poor a personnel move as Riley has ever made -- a move that will cost Miami long after Riley leaves.

Riley overspent so wildly on Grant that Miami owner Micky Arison clamped closed his wallet after that acquisition. Riley can talk all he likes about agreeing with Arison's view on fiscal sanity and staying under the luxury tax, but someone as desperate to win as Riley does not stop spending unless his boss demands it.