Within a basketball context, the misery that has befallen Pat Riley in Miami is almost biblical, absent only the locusts and plague.

If Allan Houston doesn't get a bounce . . .

If Clarence Weatherspoon does . . .

Then maybe Jamal Mashburn and P.J. Brown are never traded from a team that was better than any in the Eastern Conference right now and . . .

Ifs and maybes, they are what losers cling to in the absence of anything else. There are a million things that could have dramatically altered the unstable place where this Miami franchise stands today, everything from the health of a kidney (Alonzo Mourning's) to the decision of a 21-year-old (his name is Tracy McGrady) to one bleeping bounce against the Knicks, but here's where we are instead:

With Riley much further from the NBA's throne than he has ever been in two decades of coaching.

And with no map on how to get this lost franchise back near there, either.

Miami's calamity of a season died a little more with another loss Monday, and it rests on life support now, only the overly optimistic or stupid among us believing this team has or deserves a postseason. More damning is that this rickety franchise is rather suddenly adrift, as the Celtics revealed again Monday. Boston kept coming at Miami with players who have a future while Miami could not counter because it was armed only with players who have a past.

Boston has two stars, Antoine Walker and Paul Pierce, better than any one that Miami has, and those two won the fourth quarter, the only one that matters in the NBA. Miami's Eddie Jones? He showed for only the first three quarters, as is his tendency a little too often for a player with his paycheck. Jones appears to have the talent but not the temperament to be a good team's best player, capable of carrying a piece of the load but not the whole thing, so Miami must settle for him being the best player on a 31-38 team instead. Jones had 19 points at the end of the third quarter Monday, which is good. He still had 19 points at the end of the fourth quarter, which is not.

Miami kept swinging panicked double teams at Walker and Pierce every time they cleared out one side of the floor, and that left former Florida Marlins minor-leaguer Erick Strickland (game-high 23 points) with the kind of absurdly open shots you don't get in today's NBA unless Shaq and Kobe are your teammates. Never mind the combined 11 for 31 shooting of Walker and Pierce. They controlled the game when it needed to be controlled, which is why Shaq calls Pierce ``the [expletive] truth.''

''We took their scorers out,'' Jones said. ``Their scorers got nowhere near their average.''

So that's what passes for victory in Miami now?

Losing but holding the other team's scorers below their average?

Once upon a time, against this Boston team, Mourning would have been the glowing nuclear epicenter around which everything in this game revolved, but his body has betrayed him in ways that aren't obvious to the eye. He had what you would consider a very nice game for just about anybody Monday (20 points, 10 rebounds, two blocked shots) until you place it against what he used to do against when he was perfectly healthy.

In 1995, Mourning averaged 33 points against the Celtics. In 1996, he had one game in which he scored 45 points, grabbed 11 rebounds and blocked seven shots against the Celtics. His career highs for assists (seven) and blocks (nine) have come against the Celtics, as have his career highs for field goals made (19) and attempted (34). It is not a coincidence the Celtics didn't pass Miami in the standings until Pierce and Walker rose while Mourning's health forced him to drop.

Riley's blueprint has been short-circuited by things like that, the timing bordering on cruel. Tim Hardaway carried this franchise when Mourning wasn't quite yet ready but broke down as soon as Mourning had matured enough to join him. Get a bounce against the Knicks, and maybe Riley never deals Mashburn and Brown and signs Jones and Brian Grant, making his team worse (and far more expensive) even as he made Charlotte better.

These things happen, though. The teams Miami is chasing (was chasing?) for that final playoff spot have all suffered the equivalent of what Miami has with Mourning this year, Charlotte losing Mashburn to injury for months, Philadelphia losing Allen Iverson and the Pacers trading Jalen Rose.

So now Miami is old and unathletic and the only team in the NBA without a starter under 30. Miami's veterans are formed, too, which is not a good thing, not at 31-38. With the exception of perhaps Eddie House, there isn't a player on this team who is going to get any better.

And without players who are going to get better, how is the team going to do so?