In downtown Indianapolis the great arched roof of the Fieldhouse looms like a basilica over the consciousness of the devout residents. In 49 states basketball is just a game. In Indiana it's a religion, an obsession, a lifestyle.

The Fieldhouse is a beautiful arena, newly built but harking back in style and sentiment to the 1950s, to the heyday of Indiana High School Basketball when a school from the one-horse town of Milan won the State championship on a buzzer-beating shot dropped by a farm kid called Bobby Plump.

Milan beat Muncie and, in the world of Indiana basketball, it was as if the third secret of Fatima had been revealed to confirm that all romance is contained in sport.

This week the New York Knicks rampaged into town. Of course, the Knicks are city with a capital "C". Ghetto even. If ever a sports franchise reflected the bruising hustle of the world's greatest metropolis than it is the modern day Knicks.

They are a couple of cab drivers bawling each other out in the street. They are longlimbed youths striding quickly through the carriage of a hurtling subway train. They are Robert de Niro saying: "Hey. You looking at me?"

They call the series, for the Eastern Conference title and the right to play in the NBA finals, the Knicks versus the Hicks. Both sides are happy with their billing but the Knicks have had less time to ponder it.

They have just come off yet another epic struggle with the Miami Heat, the progeny of their totemic former coach the Armani swaddled Pat Riley.

Riley is the King of Cool, the man who presided over the LA Lakers back in the Showtime era, inventor and owner of the term Three-Peat used now by any US sports team looking for three in a row of anything and the author of a slew of motivational books.

Since he left the Knicks four years ago under a mushroom cloud of unprecedented acrimony, his Miami Heat team have played the Knicks forty times.

They have brawled, they have gouged each other, each has sucked the life from the soul of the other. Add up the aggregate points in forty clashes and there is one point between them, yet Riley has come off the worst.

Last week the Knicks somehow beat him again. Riley's old assistant in New York, a little, sleep-deprived man called Jeff Van Gundy, outhustled his mentor once more. The aftermath was so bitter that Van Gundy's brother Stan, an assistant coach to Riley couldn't bring himself to speak to his sibling afterwards.

Riley himself confessed that he was so traumatised by the defeat that for the first time in his life he had nothing to say to his team. Alonzo Mourning, his friend and his best player, had to come into the coach's inner sanctum and physically lift Riley up and turn him towards the door and his team. "Coach, go do your job."

So the Knicks were drained when they came to Indianapolis to play the Pacers, who for good measure they also despise when they are fully awake. The animosity is mutual.

The Knicks are your worst nightmare if you come from here.

The Knicks are Jeff Van Gundy, a man who never played NBA basketball but who figured it all out like an accountant unravelling a tricky audit.

The Indiana Pacers are tended by Mr Larry Bird, no less. Bird is essence of Indiana, the self-proclaimed Hick from French Lick, the last great white hope when he played for the Boston Celtics and mixed it up with Magic Johnson every year.

Bird looms over Van Gundy like a farm boy contemplating a diminutive pickpocket. For the first two games of this seven-game series things went Larry Bird's way.

By Game Two the Knicks had lost Patrick Ewing to injury. Ewing is to New York basketball what the Empire State building is to the New York skyline. Old but irreplaceable.

Even in this league of millionaires there is room for redemption, room for heroes and Van Gundy's Knicks have increasingly been looking towards Latrell Sprewell for their inspiration.

Sprewell is the poster boy for second chances. And third and fourth chances. During a practice session when he was at the Golden State Warriors he felt it necessary to attempt to choke his coach PJ Carlissimo.

He then marched off slamming doors in his wake only to return twenty minutes later for the grace note, socking Carlissimo with a punch.

He spent a year out of the game for that but the rap sheet doesn't end there. He's had fines for cursing at fans, fines for having a mouthy agent. Once Sprewell's daughter had her ear bitten off by his pit bull and Sprewell lingered and lingered before reluctantly having his dog put down.

He wears his hair in corn rows, gangsta style and when is introduced to the crowd before a game he doesn't run out high-fiving everyone, he comes through barging them put of his way with his shoulder. For anyone who doesn't live in New York, he is the essence of what being a jerk is about.

And yet, he plays like a demon, 100 per cent of his energies served up every time. He is articulate to the point where he can convey his sense of alienation without using the poverty and violence of his childhood as a weapon, and he has courage, with a game on the line and the crowd baying like crazies, he always wants the ball.

The Knicks versus the Hicks switched stage to New York late last week and the Knicks, still missing Ewing but growing defiantly in his absence, clawed a home game back. 2-1. First to four wins.

By the time you read this they'll probably have filched another in their beloved Madison Square Garden, where Sprewell strides like a god. Then it's back to the Fieldhouse for one last stand.

They are old and tough and hobbled and probably as bad for you as sixty smokes a day but you root for them like you rooted for Cagney or Bogart and all the other pug-ugly baddies who once reflected the real world we live in.

Hicks to lose. Sin to beat Virtue in seven. More weeping in heaven.