"The only (expletive) thing I'm disappointed in is that Zo didn't connect when he tried to punch that (expletive) in the face." - Pat Reilly, Miami Heat coach.

If it's raw and undisguised hatred that you're looking for in sport, then the current NBA play-off series between the New York Knicks and the Miami Heat is the tie to watch.

On Saturday, ITV aired one of the most incredible sporting images ever captured on film, one that is simultaneously outrageous and funny. Jeff Van Gundy, the Knicks' head coach, always bears the look of a Wall Street broker whose world has just collapsed. Pale and unkempt, you see him on the sideline and find yourself hoping he makes it through the night. He lives and dreams Knicks basketball.

Two years ago, with the Knicks and the Heat embroiled in what has become an annual, early summer war of attrition, all hell broke loose and Alonzo Mourning, Miami's 6ft 11in power forward, went on the rampage after New York's 6ft 6in Larry Johnson, fists swinging like cannonballs.

Van Gundy hurled himself into the midst of the brawl and was instantly swatted to the floor like a fly. So he did what any head coach of a globally recognised sporting franchise would do. He grabbed hold of Mourning's lower leg.

As the film sequence shows the Knicks and Heat players mauling each other, you have to peer hard through the maze of legs to see Van Gundy. But there he is, clinging madly on, a koala bear in a crumpled suit.

For a good 10 seconds, Mourning continues to wade on before finally becoming aware of some kind of irritant way down south. He looks below and, as if seeing the opposition coach attached to his calf was an everyday thing, starts to vigorously shake his leg as if ridding himself of an over affectionate mongrel. Eventually, Van Gundy releases his grip. Those seconds of madness have come to symbolise a clash which has already become part of American sporting lore.

Tonight, the show is in Madison Square Garden, with Miami leading the best of seven series by two games to one. For all the hype about Shaquille O'Neal, the bitterness between the Knicks-Heat has been the most salient feature of the post-Jordan NBA. The play-offs are broadcast either live or through delayed transmission to most parts of the world, but in this sometimes ridiculous country we must make do with the half-hour highlight show on ITV.

(Memo to Tim O'Connor of RTE: if ITV can send a camera and a presenter out to the States for a few weeks, couldn't RTE? Along with hurling, NBA play-off basketball can make the best TV sport on this earth).

But even in that limited time, it is possible to capture some of the oh-so bitter flavour of a rivalry which, because of its ugliness and venom, restores your faith in a professional sport which is too often perceived as a racket during which boorish athletes yell "show me the money".

Since these teams regularly began meeting each other at play-off time four years ago, the atmosphere has become hyper-charged and the personalities have simply forgotten themselves. Hence, the normally super slick Pat Reilly, a basketball legend, found himself uttering the above words after the Mourning and Johnson fracas. It was the US equivalent of Kevin Keegan's immortal, "I would love it, love it, if we beat them now."

It ought to be noted that the actual basketball these two teams play is often horribly poor - bruising and error-ridden. But in this case, the sport has been enveloped by the personalities and the highlight films generally concentrate on plays which don't involve the ball.

ITV ran a few of them for our delectation. Bang, smash, wallop. "It's a war, a lot of elbows thrown and bodies hitting the floor. That's the way this series is going to be," assessed Miami's PJ Brown.

Brown is a veteran of this most uncivil war, not to be found wanting in either physical or verbal cuffs. "The whole New York aura," he complained after the 1997 scrap. "They're the worst. I dislike them more than any team in the league. It's all that arrogance, like their gods or something. They haven't won anything in 20 years."

And that sentence defines, in fact, the essence of this rivalry, captures its magnetic appeal. New York are the self-styled bad asses of American basketball and because of that the tv cameras love them.

Choose your villain. Latrell Spreewell, the braid-haired live wire once thrown out of the league for choking his coach. Or Larry Johnson, mouthy and proud, who loves to goad the Heat when they are down. Or Patrick Ewing, the best player never to win a championship ring (as yet), Mr New York basketball.

On Saturday, we saw ITV's Beverly Turner standing at courtside previewing the game, promising us that "these guys hate each other". Behind her was Ewing, 7ft 0in and all bandaged up, and it was hard not to imagine that if and when he retires, this great enmity will simply fizzle out.

Ewing has made, oh, probably hundreds of millions of dollars suiting up for the Knicks, and since his heyday in the 1980s has become a totem for the club. Ewing's quest for a world title with the Knicks has taken on a mythical quality. Thus far, it has brought him nothing but heartache and ruined knees. You watch Ewing warming up and you see that while he still possesses that graceful effortlessness, there is a stiffness to his movements.

Later, during the game, we see him hit the floor and wince as his knees buckle. Sometimes it's like watching an old man. He has his faults, coming across at times as ridiculously aloof, but he is at the same time a loveable sports figure because he so dearly loves New York. And the home fans, of course, have begun to boo him in his waning years, heaping it on him every time he errs in the Garden. It's the big city way and Ewing has no complaints.

This week, there will be more fireworks between the two clubs. Even though the aggression has gone way beyond the NBA parameters, the league administrators are torn in their attitude to it because the hatred has spiced up a league which was becoming fat and lazy.

Such simmering violence and hatred is perhaps comparable in terms of intensity to the Glasgow soccer derbies but, unlike at the Parkhead or Ibrox, the fighting does not extend to the stands. Watch any NBA game and you'll see that the predominant fan profile is white, cola slurping and comfortably wealthy. They yell and jump around and go home and forget about it. Except, of course, the Knicks fans who stoned the Miami team bus last year.

This is almost certainly Ewing's last stand. He is, at heart, a cantankerous oul' hoor, but there are still few sights in contemporary sport more stirring than the big man taking control on home court, glowering and mouthing off. Someday soon, some of the terrestrial channels are going to wise up and bring us regular NBA play-off coverage.