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In a mostly lopsided contest most fans will remember for the ejection of Maccabi Electra Tel-Aviv’s coach and his refusal to leave the court, Israel’s premier basketball franchise still managed to impress the New York Knicks with its perseverance.

Sunday’s game in New York was organized as a fundraiser for Migdal Ohr, a non-profit that provides education and social guidance to underprivileged Israeli children, but the feel-good mood was threatened when Maccabi head coach Pini Gershon picked up two technical fouls within 53 seconds of each other in the third quarter.

Gershon’s refusal to budge caused an eight-minute delay in the game; Rabbi Yitzchak Dovid Grossman, head of Migdal Ohr, added to the already surreal scene by stepping on the court to intervene.

But the enormous distraction seemed to refocus Maccabi, which fell behind by as many as 27 points in the third period and trailed by 24 at the time of Gershon’s ejection. Maccabi pulled to within 14 points on several occasions in the fourth quarter of its 106-91 loss.

As Maccabi lost 112-85 to the Knicks in 2007, what was billed in game programs as “The Rematch” turned out to be a closer affair — and regardless of the final score, there was no denying that the game’s atmosphere was more intense than an average exhibition contest.

“They know like anybody else that this game is a long game, you are never out of it, and you just need a run or two and you’re right back in the game,” Knicks’ point guard Chris Duhon said of Maccabi’s effort. “And that’s what they did, they kept us fighting throughout the whole game.”

When he finally left the game, Gershon received loud support from Sunday’s largely pro-Maccabi crowd on Sunday, many of whom brought Israeli flags and wore the team’s color of yellow. Besides for witnessing the novelty of an Israeli team playing an NBA squad, fans who bought tickets benefited the more than 6,000 children of Migdal Ohr who come from overcrowded apartments, one-parent families, homes with drug problems, and other impoverished and crime-ridden settings.

“It’s a wonderful thing that people can come over here, bring their kids out, have a wonderful time — and that gets transferred over to the kids in Israel to have a good time as well,” Rabbi Ari Kahn, a vice president for Migdal Ohr, said.

With Gerhson unavailable for comment after the game, Maccabi’s players were left to downplay the third-quarter fracas before catching a flight to Los Angeles for Tuesday’s exhibition with another NBA team, the Clippers.

“It is what it is. It’s an exhibition game, it’s a preseason game,” Maccabi’s Chuck Eidson said. “We won our first Euroleague game and that’s really our goal and aspiration.”

Gershon’s intensity on the sideline, however, suggested that for him and his team, this was not just any exhibition game. Duhon said Maccabi’s energy, whether it came on the court or emanated from the bench, was indicative of foreign players’ approach to basketball.

“That’s how guys from overseas play,” Duhon said. “Even the ones that are in the league now, they always play hard, and it’s something that’s contagious.”

Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni could only empathize with Gershon’s plight.

“Hey, I’ve been there,” D’Antoni said with a smile at a post-game press conference. “I’m sure he has just coached his team as hard as he can coach them.”

D’Antoni, who coached in Italy for seven years in the 1990s, praised Maccabi as a competitive team in the Euroleague, known as Europe’s highest level of professional basketball.

“They’re always good,” he said of Maccabi. “[Gershon] is one of the better coaches in Europe and they’ve got a nice game. I don’t know the European scene that well anymore, but Maccabi and Tel-Aviv has a special place there. It’s a good basketball city.”

Maccabi also produced Omri Casspi, the first Israeli-born player selected in the first round of the NBA Draft, as the Sacramento Kings picked the 6-foot-9 forward in June. Casspi is on the Kings’ roster for this coming season.

While sending a homegrown player to the NBA represented a huge step for Israeli sports, it also meant Casspi’s versatile skill set wasn’t available for Maccabi on Sunday.

“I think if you add a player like [Casspi], from what I know about him, that definitely gives [Maccabi] a whole lot more, because you have a guy who can handle the ball at his height,” Knicks forward Jared Jeffries said.

Nevertheless, Jeffries said that compared with the Maccabi team he played in 2007, “I think they definitely have a bigger team this year and they’ve got some guys they can put up that are very multidimensional that can make shots.”

Tal Brody, a Trenton native who starred at guard for Maccabi and is now on the team’s board, said of Casspi’s jump to the NBA, “every player we lose from Israel, for sure it hurts the team tremendously, but you don’t stop the progression of a player if he is going to go to an NBA team.”

Maccabi pulled to within 28-25 early in the second quarter on a jumper by Maciej Lampe. But the Knicks pulled away from that point, as Nate Robinson capped an 11-0 run with a 3-pointer from the right corner that gave New York a 54-33 cushion.

Lampe, a 6-foot-11 Polish center the Knicks chose with the 30th pick in the 2003 NBA draft, scored 14 points. Projected to go higher than he did in that draft, Lampe never played a regular-season game for the Knicks but did appear for the Phoenix Suns, New Orleans Hornets, and Houston Rockets in parts of three seasons.

“It’s fun being back [to New York] and maturing as a player and as a person,” Lampe said. “It’s always fun to play NBA teams, especially when it’s where everybody wants to play kind of, right? It was just fun playing in the Garden, which I never really did before. It was a good experience.”

Before the game, Jewish youngsters got the chance to shoot around with both Maccabi and the Knicks. Nachum Segal, popular host of the “JM in the AM” morning radio show on AM 620, was just one of the proud parents who brought his children to the game.

“I think it’s important to remind our Jewish youths that Jews can play ball,” Segal said. “I think it’s important to show them that a professional basketball team comes from Israel and is competitive and that they have a lot of fun, and that in the Jewish tradition you can do whatever you want. You can sit and study the books, or you can sanctify God’s name on the basketball court.”