Unhappy Return for Ewing

He fumbled the ball the first time he touched it, he dribbled it terribly, shot it poorly and didn’t lead his team to a storybook victory.

No, Patrick Ewing’s comeback wasn’t the stuff of legend.

“I thought I was going to have a better game,” Ewing said after his first game in 4 1/2 months, an 85-77 victory for Indiana over the New York Knicks that gave the Pacers a 2-0 lead in their best-of-seven second-round series.

This was the night the Knicks had been waiting for since Ewing, sidelined in December because of what was thought to be a career-threatening broken wrist, vowed to return for the playoffs.

But as should have been expected, he was rusty. So much so, in fact, that he may have been more of a liability.

He was on the court with the starting five, but lost the opening tip in what would turn out to be a long list of instances when Ewing simply was not his old self.

“We were not going to let him step out here and be a savior,” Pacer guard Reggie Miller said. “We talked about it, Rik [Smits] took it personally and we weren’t going to let that happen to us.”

Ewing looked tentative in catching a 60-foot pass less than a minute into the game and had his first shot blocked. His next attempt was blocked too, and he missed his first five shots en route to shooting three for 11 and getting 10 points and six rebounds in 27 minutes.

Ewing had a few defensive lapses too, none of which were more costly than when he left Smits wide open with 1:31 left for a jumper that gave Indiana a 79-73 lead.

The Knicks would pull to 79-77 on a layup by Ewing with 46 seconds left, but the Pacers held New York scoreless the rest of the way and wrapped up the victory by going six for six from the free-throw line.

The series moves to New York for Game 3 on Saturday.

“The one game I have under my belt will help me in the next one,” Ewing said. “It’ll be hyped in New York. It’ll be a different story. I’m looking forward to it. I think I can make a big difference.”

Smits scored 22 points and Miller had 21 for the Pacers, who again got a strong contribution from their reserves (28 points).

John Starks scored 20 off the bench to lead New York, while Allan Houston had 16 and Larry Johnson, returning from a two-game suspension for fighting with Alonzo Mourning of Miami in the first round, had 15.