Especially when you are the Indiana Pacers, and your claim to infamy is never being able to get past this round.

So when the Pacers took the first two games of the series at home against the Knicks, they thought this holiday weekend in the Big Apple represented the chance to finally kill all those demons that had built up in losing in the conference finals four times in six years.

Instead, Larry Bird's veteran team did what millions of Americans did this weekend. They took it off.

Once again, the Knicks played without injured center Patrick Ewing, a surefire Hall of Famer. Latrell Sprewell, New York's most important and explosive player, sustained a fractured bone in his foot in the late stages of Game 3 that robbed him of much of his lateral quickness and shooting touch Monday.

Maybe their quick start to the series coupled with the Knicks' rash of injuries created some sort of cushion affect that led to the Pacers napping defensively on far too many possessions.

For the second time in as many games, the Pacers finished strong to make the final score respectable. And once again, they lost.

The Knicks -- a team with as much resiliency as any in the league -- walked off the Madison Square Garden floor 91-89 winners. They held serve on their home floor to tie a series that, for all practical purposes, starts over again Wednesday night at Indiana's Conseco Fieldhouse.

In the postgame aftermath, there was a lot of talk about how the Pacers had clawed back from a 17-point halftime deficit to get within one on a Reggie Miller 3-pointer with just under seven minutes left only to see Larry Johnson (game-high 25 points) come right back with a 3 of his own for the Knicks.

Miller, the Pacers' heart and soul, sighed of how it was the biggest turning point of the contest. But maybe that is part of the problem with this team. Maybe they don't quite get it.

The Pacers didn't lose because LJ (5-for-5 on 3-pointers) shot like Miller usually does from the outside. They lost because they forgot to play defense early.

You can make a case that the best defensive stop the Pacers made all weekend was when assistant coach Rick Carlisle tripped Sprewell in Game 3. The NBA fined him $10,000, but Bird should give him a pat on the back for at least showing some fight.

"It was all defense," Bird said. "We didn't play defense in the first quarter. They were hitting shots and they were just ripping us apart. In the second half we decided to defend but forgot to rebound."

Uh, isn't this a bad time for a team supposedly on a mission to be developing selective memory lapses?

The Pacers have as many good players as the Knicks do. It's just that the Knicks have a habit of playing big when it counts the most.

Typifying the difference in the two teams was the idiotic "This is the biggest win in franchise history" statement by Miller following an ugly Game 2 in which even Bird admitted his team lucked out.

It's time for Reggie Miller and Larry Bird to stop making excuses and start winning again.(AP)

How could Game 2 of any best-of-7 series be the biggest? Weren't the Pacers watching what the Knicks did against Miami? The Heat won Game 1 to go up 1-0, won Game 3 to go up 2-1, won Game 5 to go up 3-2, then lost Game 7 to go home. The longer a series goes, the tougher the Knicks get. And the longer this one goes, the healthier the Knicks are bound to get.

The Pacers should have stomped on them when the opportunity was there.

"I can't put a finger on it," said Pacers point guard Travis Best, who along with Mark Jackson has been toasted by the Knicks' Charlie Ward the past two games of this series. "A game this big, you definitely want to, especially on the road, jump on the other team and get in front. We just have to come out and get a better start."

It was almost as if the Pacers just wanted to keep it close the first three quarters and let Miller bail them out with jump shots the way he did against the Bucks and Sixers. But the Knicks aren't the Bucks and Sixers. They are the defending conference champions, as the Pacers remember better than anyone. Relying on jump shots isn't winning basketball this deep in the playoffs.

Oh, Miller tried to defy that theory, all right. He hoisted up 23 shots -- and went 4-for-13 from 3-point land -- in Game 4. He scored 24 points. But what he didn't score was a knockout punch.

Just one win, that is all the Pacers needed this weekend to all but end the series. Now it is back to the beginning.

Now is the time for Jalen Rose to get involved before the third quarter, something he didn't come close to doing in Game 3 or 4.

Now is the time for Rik Smits -- all 7-feet-4 of him -- to play big in crunch time. Something that shouldn't be hard to do when he's mainly being guarded -- thanks to Ewing's absence -- by 6-9 Kurt Thomas.

And Bird, who certainly hasn't shied away from dishing out blame the last few days, needs to start doing a better job exploiting the advantages that his team is supposed to have.

As far as Jeff Van Gundy's Knicks go, he never conceded anything without Ewing and a hindered Sprewell. It showed in the way his team attacked.

"It's not who we play," Van Gundy said, "it's how we play."

If the Pacers were smart, they were taking notes.

Because it's precisely the way they need to play if they plan on winning this series instead of moaning about how another one got away.