CASHING IN A TRIFECTA : With Pitino, Ewing and Bianchi in Front, Knicks Are Back in Business

NEW YORK —  In Patrick Ewing, Rick Pitino and Al Bianchi, the New York Knicks have hit the trifecta. Bianchi makes the deals, Pitino draws the Xs and Os and directs floor proceedings like a Times Square traffic cop and Ewing shows the way -- the emergent team leader in his fourth pro season. The winnings could include an Atlantic Division title.

Saturday night, the struggling Washington Bullets will find that Madison Square Garden is getting to be the caldron it was in 1972-73 when the five retired numbers hanging from the ceiling -- Frazier, Monroe, Reed, DeBusschere and Bradley -- were winning the league championship. Corporate types are out again in their suits, authenticating Knicks trendiness. Long-suffering fans still boo, but less frequently as Knicks lapses diminish. The pot is stirred by an organist with something to sound off about, and a short man who dances underneath a basket during timeouts.

But the main men are:

-- Pitino, a boyish-looking, ambitious (he interrupted his wedding night to interview for an assistant’s job) workaholic (he cut short the honeymoon) described by his former boss Hubie Brown as having a “frantic, controlled energy.”

-- Ewing, of whom four-year teammate Gerald Wilkins says, “He’s really matured. He’s caught up with what Patrick Ewing can do.”

-- Bianchi, plucked from the obscurity of 12 seasons as a Phoenix assistant (next stop, Sun City?) to become a Broadway smash by stealing rebounder Charles Oakley in a deal with Chicago that’s helped put the Knicks in high gear.

The result is that the Knickerbockers are in first place, and making an emphatic impression on their opposition. Sacramento Coach Jerry Reynolds paid them the highest compliment so far, after the Knicks had beaten his Kings last week; he labeled them as good as any NBA team with the exception of the Lakers.

They look an odd couple, the exuberant, diminutive Pitino and the reserved, mountainous Ewing. But they’re both prodigies of the game, Pitino having been a college head coach at 25 and Ewing a budding franchise in high school. As coach, Pitino appears to have unlocked the opportunities so many people had envisioned for Ewing as a pro. And Ewing has taken advantage.

“He’s been terrific,” said Pitino, after a recent victory over Denver. The slender, dark-haired Pitino is 36 but could pass for much younger. He’s a fast-talker. “Terrific” is one of his favorite words. “I think Ewing, Barkley and Magic, those three so far are sticking out. They just seem to be taking their teams to another level.”

Ewing’s increasing dominance is no accident. Nothing that concerns Pitino seems accidental. In his second year as New York head coach, he knows exactly what he wants and -- unlike his immediate predecessors -- seems to know how to get it.

To begin with, even though he was ensconced as coach at Providence College, he wanted to be coach of the Knickerbockers. He had been interviewed before anyone else when the job opened in April 1987. But the job remained vacant and Pitino even signed an extension of his Providence contract. When the Knicks finally filled another long vacancy that July, naming Bianchi general manager, Bianchi promptly learned that Pitino still wanted to be coach.

“He had gotten word back that he was really interested, still very much interested in the job,” Bianchi said. Bianchi went to New England to interview Pitino.

“The pluses were that he was from New York,” said Bianchi, “and he had been here before,” as Brown’s assistant in 1983-85. Pitino also had turned losing programs into winners at Boston University and Providence, and done it fast, taking Providence to the Final Four in his second season. Given that the Knicks were so young, Pitino was likely to bring in some college spirit and generate it among the players. When Providence stepped aside, the Knickerbockers had their man.

In hiring Pitino, club president Richard Evans had said the new coach would “move into” the Garden. Pitino almost literally has. He expects his players “to come early rather than on time,” but no one gets anywhere faster than Pitino.

On taking the job, he began checking up on Ewing, who had been plagued by injuries his first two seasons. Ewing also had had a rough relationship with Brown, who had tried to make him a forward. While a regular 20-point scorer, Ewing had been bogged down with a bad team and his career had yet to lift off. Pitino called John Thompson.

“He just told me he wishes he had 12 players like Patrick Ewing from an attitude standpoint, he’d be in the national-championship spotlight every year,” said Pitino. “He has a tremendous attitude.

“I heard, taking over the job, nine out of 10 people I’d spoken to, said negatives.

“See, I knew different. You get a Georgetown kid, you get three main ingredients: someone who’s very respectful to a coach and to his teammates; two, you get someone who’s very, very loyal; the third thing, you get somebody who works hard. Anytime I can get a Georgetown player, I’ll take less of a talent for a Georgetown player any day of the week. I found out that everything that John said was 100 percent the truth.”

Bianchi, too, was looking for ways to make Ewing happy and productive because Bianchi considers him “the rock of the franchise.”

“A lot of negative things were coming out of here about him,” said Bianchi. “He didn’t play this, he didn’t play that.

“But my intention was to give everyone the opportunity to react to a different stimulus, meaning a new coach. I’m not throwing stones at Hubie. Certain guys play better for different coaches. Patrick has responded. Patrick is always saying he likes to win, and it started at the end of last season. When there’s a vast difference you’ve got to credit the coach.”

Pitino and Ewing seem as well matched as Thompson and Ewing were. Last season, the Pitino-Ewing combination paid off with a late drive and a playoff berth. This season, Ewing’s game has picked up even more. Injury free, he’s averaging 22.6 points and 9.7 rebounds.

“I think he’s not come out of his shell,” said Pitino, “but he’s become so much more of a leader. When times are bad, he speaks up and gets the guys going. Last year, when times were good, he’d speak up. Now he speaks up all the time. He’s really come to the forefront as a leader. And everybody definitely looks to him.”

Before this season, Pitino had a talk with Ewing.

“I said, ‘Patrick, you’re one of the oldest guys on the team and you’ve only been in the league a short period of time. But you have got to lead because you’re the best player and you also have to lead because everybody looks up to you.’ He’s doing a terrific job.”

Meanwhile, Bianchi has worked to build up around the “rock of the franchise” rather than chip away at the “rock’s” strengths as Brown seemed to. Brown had tried a “Twin Towers” lineup with 7-foot Bill Cartwright and Ewing; while that had long been abandoned, Bianchi wrote a timely last chapter on 30-year-old Cartwright’s Knickerbockers career by trading him in June for Bulls forward Charles Oakley, just 25 years old this Sunday. Oakley had led the league in rebounds over two seasons and could throw the outlet pass that would let Pitino open up his offense. This season, the Knicks’ scoring average has soared from 102 a year ago to 120 and Ewing is playing a relaxed game.

“Oakley likes to play outside,” said Pitino, “Patrick likes to play inside. They complement each other so well.”

“The load is not on Patrick to rebound,” said Wilkins. “Now Patrick can rotate off to block shots, to make steals, to help another guy out. And if he misses the block, Oakley’s there to rebound. He can gamble more. He’s not in foul trouble much anymore because he used to have to go get all the rebounds. Now he can just pick his spots. He doesn’t have to go all the way across the floor, he has Oakley to help him.”

A year ago, Bianchi made another shrewd move. He plucked small forward Johnny Newman out of Richmond from NBA (Cleveland) waivers. Already, Bianchi and Pitino had lucked into a top-quality floor general in Mark Jackson, the prize draft choice of 1987 who was selected by the scouting staff when the team had neither a coach nor general manager. The holdover Wilkins became their fifth starter.

“We have less experience in our starting five than the Charlotte Hornets,” said Bianchi, with satisfaction.

The starting five are just the right age for Pitino. They reflect his energy and tenacity: They run and shoot, and press a lot on defense. They exude enthusiasm, just as Pitino would have it.

Ewing is as contented as any. After he fouled out of the Denver game -- something he rarely does this season with Oakley around -- Ewing cheered on the Knicks. With Michael Adams at the free-throw line with a chance to tie the game with no time on the clock after an overtime, Ewing waved a towel and shouted at Adams, trying to distract him. Whether or not he did, Adams missed.

“I wanted him to miss it so bad,” said Ewing, “into” the game even when on the bench. “ ‘Oh, man, please let him miss it.’ It was just such a relief when he missed that one. Whew.”

Ewing was all smiles as he dressed. And why not? Everything is going his way. Off the court, he has bought a home in Bethesda, Md.; in season, he keeps a New Jersey apartment. On court, Jackson passes to him to help his offense; Oakley helps his defense. He’s buoyed by the feeling of being on a team that’s clearly on the rise.

“My teammates have been getting me the ball and my shots are falling,” said Ewing. “I’ve been playing a lot, getting a lot of minutes. Things are just starting to fall into place.

“I really don’t know the reason why because I’m doing the same things, other than I’ve made some adjustments in my game to try to pass the ball out of the post more often, try to make people pay for doubling and triple-teaming me.”

With team “chemistry” just about right -- Pitino and Bianchi had used the word “chemistry” -- the difference in Ewing is apparent.

“It feels great -- everybody’s together,” said Ewing. “There’s great camaraderie. We like being around one another. We cheer for each other.”

“It’s been unbelievable,” said Bianchi. “He’s really having fun. He really enjoys playing.”

Bianchi isn’t overstating the case for Ewing. He knows, if Ewing goes down with an injury the team will go down, too, that the Knickerbockers without Ewing are “just an ordinary team.”

“We’ve got a lot of improvement ahead of us,” Pitino said. “We’ve got to get better on our man defense. We’ve got to protect the basketball more; we’re turning it over too much.”

But he had to admit, “When you can win and still have all that area for improvement, it’s a very positive sign.”

The Knickerbockers, who clearly believe they’re “arriving,” often fall behind and play as if they know they can spurt when they want to and win. Falling way behind Denver, though, was a little much; it brought out the con as well as the pro in Pitino.

“I told them at halftime, I lied, ‘It’s your game, it’s definitely 100 percent in your hands,’ ” he said. “ ‘I can see them getting tired.’ I didn’t believe it one bit.”

But there was more to the comeback than that. Running courtside the entire second half, Pitino called defenses, mixing in his press at opportune times. “Denver,” he said, “creates bad matchup problems for you. The press will at least take you out of bad matchup problems. When we play San Antonio, Denver, the Lakers, teams with a lot of motion, that’s when our lack of foot speed in certain areas shows. When we play against pattern teams that run offensive sets, we know what they’re going to do. We’ve just got to keep on getting better man-to-man wise, and I think we will.”

He said it as if there was no doubt. This New York team probably isn’t architect Bianchi’s finished product -- although it has some depth and Tuesday night Pitino simply rested his starters and let such reserves as forward Sidney Green, a Bianchi pickup from Detroit, and the swift and promising rookie guard Rod Strickland blow away the hapless Nets.

Bianchi said he wants “another big body up front who can shoot and another shooter in the back. That could fix us up for the next six or seven years.”

Like that, the Knickerbockers have again brought the Garden to life. To a standing ovation, they roared off the floor after beating the Nuggets, Ewing waving his towel and a satisfied Jackson smacking a trash can for emphasis. The Knicks are back.