Even after Rick Pitino withdrew from consideration for the only professional coaching job he ever coveted, he still hoped he would someday become coach of the Knicks, the team of his playground fantasies. But not even the young optimist, who gained national prominence in March by guiding Providence College to the Final Four, dreamed that the day would come so soon.
Two months after he agreed on a five-year contract with Providence that appeared to all but eliminate him from contention for the Knicks' job, Pitino was named head coach of the team yesterday by Dick Evans, the president of Madison Square Garden and the Knicks. Pitino, 34 years old, was once a regular on the playgrounds of of Manhattan and Queens.
''You're always playing mind games with yourself, when you're dribbling around three-on-three at P.S. 147 in Queens, that someday you're going to be playing for the Knicks,'' Pitino said after a news conference at Madison Square Garden yesterday. ''But when I stopped growing and stopped getting faster, I understood that that was not a reality. The next best thing was to coach the Knicks. That dream was fulfilled today.'' Success at Providence
Pitino leaves Providence with a record of 42-23 in two seasons, and with credit for reviving a program that was once one of the nation's most successful. He is best known for his intensity during practices and games, and his teams reflect his emotions. The Friars' exciting full-court defensive pressure was the staple of their success.
''Providence College, to me, was the greatest college job in the world,'' Pitino said. ''I've always said that. In my heart it was very difficult to leave because it's been so dear to me. But this is a job that is also very dear to me.
''What job is better? I have no idea. You're entering a dark tunnel; you don't know what's at the end of it. But when I met with my team this morning I told them that for this reason, and this reason only, that I was accepting the job: it was the challenge, to bring the Knicks back to where we once were.''
If he accomplishes that, Pitino, a Knick assistant under Hubie Brown from 1983 to 1985, will be lucratively rewarded. He signed a three-year contract that, including incentives for victories, could be worth just over $1 million, a team source said. Pitino will be the youngest head coach in the National Basketball Association.
Pitino's contract with Providence did not include a buyout clause, so the school did not receive compensation for losing its coach.
Pitino was also the head coach at Boston University for five seasons, where he was 91-51, before joining the Knicks after the 1982-83 season. A Long Search
Yesterday's announcement came 84 days after the sudden dismissals of Scotty Stirling, the Knicks' general manager, and Bob Hill, the head coach. It ended a long, exhausting search for the right personnel to stem the Knicks' recent misfortunes. Last week, Evans announced the hiring of Al Bianchi, a veteran of 31 years in professional basketball, as general manager.
''I think we now have the most positive combination of management and coaches that the Knicks have had in a long time,'' Evans said.
Indeed, of all of the candidates interviewed for the coaching job, perhaps no one wanted it as badly as Pitino.
Pitino was the first of numerous candidates interviewed by Evans and his chief assistant, Jack Diller, as they strived to reconstruct, from the top, a team that had won only 71 of 246 games during the last three seasons. But even though Evans was thoroughly impressed by Pitino's confidence, optimism and record, the Knick executive refused to make a commitment until after he had decided on a general manager.
''We'd made that mistake before,'' Evans said, referring to when the Knicks hired Brown as coach before hiring Dave DeBusschere, their former general manager.
Pitino, who was also interviewed for the Phoenix Suns' coaching job, remained the focus of the Knicks' search until May 1, when he announced that for personal reasons he could no longer wait for a decision, even though he still wanted the job. 'Difficult Times'
''My family was going through some difficult times,'' he said. ''My sons were coming home crying, saying, 'Daddy, you're leaving.' And my wife was answering the phone all the time, not only from reporters but everyone else, too. Finally, we'd had it. We gave it a good three weeks and were hoping it would get done and it wasn't. I owed it to my family to put an end to it.''
After the deadline passed, Pitino said, he thought there was ''no way in a million years'' that he would be the Knick coach next season. But the timetable changed last Wednesday when the Knicks received permission from the Rev. John F. Cunningham, the president of Providence College, to reopen negotiations with Pitino.
''We didn't know if he was still available,'' Evans said. ''But Father Cunningham said that if coaching the Knicks was something Rick wanted to do, then the college wouldn't stand in the way. They were very gracious.''
That afternoon, Pitino was called from his dentist's chair with an urgent message from the Knicks. And that evening he met for several hours with the team's triumvirate -Evans, Diller and Bianchi - at a hotel near Pitino's basketball camp in Massachusetts.
On Thursday morning, he was offered the job.
''I was caught off-guard, to say the least,'' Pitino said. ''I didn't expect any of this to happen, not after May 1.''
Bianchi said two factors worked in Pitino's favor. ''Number one, he's a bright, young, hard-working aggressive kid, and he had a real strong desire to be here,'' the general manager said. ''Number two, he had some link with the organization. Good or bad, he had a tie, a feel for the personnel.''
The ''bad'' Bianchi referred to was his two-year tenure under Brown, who was dismissed early last season. Pitino, whose relationship with the former Knick coach dates back to his days as a camper at Brown's basketball clinics, refused to say anything negative about those two years. Positive Outlook
''I think Hubie Brown's a great coach, a tremendous tactician,'' he said. ''I just look at the positives.''
Before accepting the job yesterday morning, Pitino wanted to be sure that his wife, Joanne, could accept another move. The family had built their home in Providence and, he said, ''for the first time, felt comfortable, like we were leading a normal life.''
''When she first said she would have to think about it,'' Pitino said, ''I said that I wouldn't take the job, that if we were going to do this we'd have to do it with a burning desire to make it go. Then she told me not to turn it down, that if I did I'd burn inside.''
Despite the Knicks' recent abysmal seasons, Pitino was confident that the immediate future would be bright.
''I'm not leaving the best college job in America to go through that type of season,'' he said of the Knicks' recent 24- and 23-victory seasons. ''If I thought that we would not make improvements, that we would be in that 20-victory area, then I'm a naive person. And one thing I'm not is naive.''
Pitino's first order of business will be to hire assistant coaches. His first addition is expected to be Stu Jackson, one of his assistants at Providence the last two seasons.
If there is a trait Pitino possesses that may have given him the edge over other candidates, it's his tremendous enthusiasm for the games themselves, an emotion that will surely be heightened next season.
''That's just it,'' he said. ''Everybody said, 'What's the difference between college and pro?' Well, this year, I was in ecstasy for 34 games, and now I'll be in ecstasy for 100 games. Every day of my life I'm involved with basketball, I'm a happy man.''