MIAMI – Here were the Knicks without Carmelo Anthony against the mighty Miami Heat Friday night, and you just know that Amar’e Stoudemire had to love it.
No, he didn’t love the Knicks losing another game, this one, 99-89. But for this night and Saturday in Houston, the Knicks are Stoudemire’s team again, just as they were before Anthony came to the Garden and took over the entire operation, lock, stock and barrel.
Anthony hadn’t made a shot in what seems like weeks, and you can bet that factored into his decision to shut himself down. The idea that he had a case of the “LeBron Flu” was preposterous and flat-out wrong.
If you’ve watched Anthony and James go at it over the years, neither backs down when they go head-to-head. They’re good friends off the court, and it’s evident when they’re on the same court on the same night, because they always seem to have a gentlemen’s agreement that goes something like this:
I’ll let you score, then you let me score.
Then everybody goes home happy, with a big night.
James refers to Melo as a “brother” and he seemed to take Anthony’s absence for the first New York-Miami showdown of the season hard.
“It sucks, it sucks,” he said beforehand. “You play the Knicks and you don’t play Melo and then you play the Lakers and Kobe‘s not playing and you play the Heat and D-Wade is not playing and you play Boston and Paul Pierce is not playing.
“It’s these guys you like playing against. They’re some of the best in the league. You thrive playing against them. As an individual, it sucks.”
Not for Stoudemire.
Funny thing, though. It was all set up for Amar’e to reestablish himself as the man. But he had very few stretches where he tried to do what he did last season before Anthony came to New York. After scoring only 12 points, he said that once the Heat stopped sending double-teams his way in the second half, he was ready to turn back the clock to the days when he was king of the Garden.
“I wanted to dominate,” he said.
But he didn’t come close. The will was there. But he couldn’t raise his game. That has to be troubling for the Knicks, who weren’t going to win this game with the three-ball. Not with Dwyane Wade and James in attack mode. The Knicks got in position to win in the fourth quarter because they bombed in 15 threes before the final 12:00.
“They came out on fire,” Wade said in his first game in two weeks after recovering from a sprained right ankle.
“They hit so many threes.”
No offense to Billy Walker, but the Knicks don’t have a Ray Allen or a Reggie Miller who can make the clutch threes. So if Stoudemire can’t carry them down the stretch of these games, against top-flight competition with Anthony out, then that’s a bad sign. Because there is no one else who can handle the heavy lifting.
On this night, Stoudemire couldn’t put the Knicks on his broad back the way he used to not so long ago. He just doesn’t have the intensity at the offensive end he showed a year ago, even on a night when he didn’t have to watch Anthony hog the ball. His energy level just isn’t the same.
“He read the game and did what was necessary,” Mike D’Antoni said afterward. “He was just playing the game. He didn’t force anything.”
That was fine when the Heat came at him with extra defenders in the first half. The 3-point shooters kept the Knicks close.
But late in the game, when nobody could make a shot, when Walker was done making threes and nobody in a Knicks uniform managed to make more than two baskets in the final quarter, they needed the Stoudemire from a year ago to get them a big upset win on the road.
This was a night when he surely needed to force the action, especially late. But he couldn’t. He tried to dominate with the game on the line. But he couldn’t.
Go back to when he could and when he was the Knicks’ top gun. Although the Knicks were only slightly better than a .500 team, he ran the show and nobody was bigger in New York for those four months.
Now Anthony is out and Stoudemire has his chance to carry the Knicks again. Didn’t do it in Miami. Now the Knicks fly halfway across the country to play the back end of a back-to-back game against a Rockets team that doesn’t scare anyone.
The Knicks are Stoudemire’s team, again, if only temporarily. They’re all his. What can he do?
