We get Knicks vs. Heat back this weekend, get that kind of basketball revival. It means we get Pat Riley back as an opponent, and that truly means one of the most formidable opponents New York has ever had in basketball. Of course he was. Of course he is. Riley changed everything at the Garden before he went to Miami and changed everything there. All that will be missing this time is old Coach Riles standing up the way he did that time when the boos came, telling the Garden to take its best shot.

He was, briefly, a giant of the place after Dave Checketts convinced him to come out of retirement, come coach Patrick Ewing, come to New York and make the Knicks matter again, which he sure did.

He eventually left badly after the 1994-95 season, as badly as he could by faxing in a resignation after Heat owner Micky Arison had been tampering with him (for at least a year) and became Pat the Rat on the back pages. But the man who had first become a coaching star with the Showtime Lakers became an even bigger star by bringing the Knicks back; by finally bringing them to Game 7 of the 1994 NBA Finals, with a team that absolutely fit his personality — the way the current Heat team coached by his Hall of Fame protegee, Erik Spoelstra does — better than those Lakers ever did.

“I was thinking about this,” another Riley protegee, Jeff Van Gundy, was saying Thursday afternoon. “People still talk about Showtime with Pat, and should, because of what they all achieved together in the ‘80s. But you know who embodies his ethos better than Showtime ever will? A team like this Heat team in this time.”

“I kept telling Pat the same thing when I was recruiting him for the Knicks,” Dave Checketts said Thursday. “‘With everything you did in Los Angeles, you will be immortal if you do it in New York.’”

And, man oh man, he almost was.

But Riley did not get the title with Patrick Ewing he was sure he was going to get in 1994, especially with Michael Jordan out of the way. Hakeem Olajuwon became a taller Jordan in June of ‘94 and John Starks shot 2-for-a-thousand in Game 6 and the Rockets beat Riley’s Knicks in seven.

Then Riley was gone after Patrick missed a finger roll at the Garden that ended a Knicks-Pacers series a year later, taking his own talents to South Beach long before he and Dwyane Wade convinced LeBron to do the same exact thing. Then he did win another title there, with Shaq and Wade, in 2006. By then he was on his way to being a legendary executive, in addition to showing the world he remained a great coach. When LeBron did get to South Beach, when he and Wade and Riley and the Heat really did turn the NBA into the AAU and convince superstars far and wide that they could go play with their buddies if the situation presented itself, the Heat won again.

Two years ago, in the NBA’s bubble year, the Heat of Riley and Erik Spoelstra, who quietly and absolutely has become one of the best in the business, nearly beat Riley’s old team, the Lakers, in the Finals.

And now, all this time after Riley left the Knicks the way he did, Riley’s Heat make their back to New York and back to the Garden for the Eastern Conference semifinals because another perfect Riley guy like Jimmy Butler has led the team past the Bucks in five games.

So everything old will be new again in this series, especially for the fans who vividly remember the 1990s, when around here there were only two basketball rivalries that mattered once Riley left town:

Knicks vs. Michael.

Knicks vs. Pat.

Everything else was the undercard. And once Riley had gotten the money and the power he wanted from Arison, the rivalry between the Knicks and Heat became even deeper, and sometimes even meaner. Checketts and Riley have long since made their peace. The two men embraced at the Hall of Fame in Springfield on the night when both Ewing and Riley were inducted. Just not in the old days.

“When I was leaving the Knicks,” Checketts said about the time when he decided he could no longer work for James L. Dolan, “Mickey Arison actually called and told me I should get a group together and buy the Heat, because he was willing to sell them to me. He said Pat and I could try to recreate what we’d had when Pat came to New York. Maybe I should have done it. But I couldn’t in the end, because at the time I still just hated [the Heat] too much.”

Now the past really does become present this weekend, and the memories will all come rushing back. It will be Allan Houston’s shot in the old Miami Arena in 1999, when the Knicks were No. 8 and the Heat were No. 1 and Van Gundy coached the slick out of Riley’s hair and Houston’s shot finally fell through the basket, mostly from exhaustion, at the end of Game 5.

It will be the night two years before when Charlie Ward got into it with P.J. Brown at the end of Game 5 in a series the Knicks were never going to lose. Half the Knicks got suspended because of that dumb fight; Ewing was one of them because he wandered a few feet away from the bench. He was out of Game 6 at the Garden. The Knicks lost that one, then lost Game 7.

It will be the night more trouble broke out at the Garden, and Van Gundy — famously — ended up holding on to Alonzo Mourning’s leg. There was much more than that. If you were around, you know. If you weren’t, well, you had to be there. It was hard and deep and passionate and pretty wonderful.

Tom Thibodeau’s old friend, Jerry Tarkanian, once told him that when another Knicks-Heat series would come along in the spring, Tark would pick out his favorite foods and clear the decks and not want to be disturbed.

“I knew I was going to see the best competition in the world,” Tark told Thibodeau.

We get all that back now with this edition of Knicks vs. Heat, with a trip to the conference finals on the line. Van Gundy once sat next to Riley. Thibodeau sat next to Van Gundy.

So much history here. One more Knicks-Heat series played out in the shadow of Pat Riley. Yeah. Seems like old times.

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