BOSTON — After Carmelo Anthony had exacted the sweetest revenge of all on Kevin Garnett — Anthony’s Knicks beat Garnett’s Celtics, 89-86 — the question was put before the Boston All-Star.
Is the spat over?
Garnett, who had answered previous game and Celtic-related questions, stood up. He cleared his throat and walked out of the room.
Guess that’s a yes.
It certainly looked like there was no bad blood between the two who both claimed their verbal war at Madison Square Garden Jan. 7 was a thing of the past. The two starting Eastern Conference All-Stars bumped fists before the opening tap. In the third quarter, Garnett hit the deck and Anthony extended a hand to lift him up. Garnett, who had applied a masterful block to a second quarter Anthony layup attempt, accepted.
“There’s no grudges between myself and KG,” Anthony said Thursday night. “Whatever happened, happened. We spoke about that and it’s over with. I don’t hold grudges or anything like that. He fell. I helped him up. I don’t hold anything against a guy like that.”
Quite a change of pace from the last time the two engaged in on-court festivities. They pretty much needed to be separated with crowbars. Garnett reportedly said things about Anthony’s wife, La La. Anthony twice tried to escalate matters afterward. In the ensuing days, both were named All-Star starters for the East while saying problems were resolved.
Maybe all is worked out between the two but certainly, not all is well with the Celtics who careened to a season-high fifth straight loss when their endgame offensive extension was somewhere between pathetic and nauseating in the loss to the Knicks. Inconsistency, thy name is Boston. The Celtics lost four straight, won six in a row and now have dropped five straight.
“It’s like one thing after another, man,” said Garnett, whose 12 rebounds in support of Rajon Rondo’s triple-double and Paul Pierce’s 22 points were not enough to halt the Knicks from earning their first win here since November 2006.
“We were having problems with our defense we kind of fixed that a little, got that under control a little bit,” Garnett added. “But now it’s the offense. We’ve got to find a way to get some easy buckets. We’ve got to keep going at this thing. We definitely don’t point fingers around here. We’re a working group and that’s what we’re going to continue to be.”
The hard work was evident last night for Boston. But the results were the same.
“It’s frustrating to lose when you give effort, because you’ve got to keep convincing your guys if you play that way every night, you’re going to make more shots than that,” Celtics coach Doc Rivers said. “And you’re going to win a lot of games.
“But right now they’re sitting there thinking, ‘We lost.’ ”
The Celtics had chances down the end, but twice in final 66 seconds, they gave the ball away on turnovers. The last one, with 7.1 seconds left, wiped out any and all hope. The Celtics had three inbounds options. Two evaporated immediately. Then Pierce couldn’t handle the inbounds as J.R. Smith — yes, J.R. Smith — dogged him on defense.
“The play was broken up and I tried to flash to the ball, really didn’t get a good hand on it. And J.R. made a good stab at the ball and it resulted in a turnover,” Pierce said.
Add it all up the result was the Garnett-Anthony feud didn’t matter one bit.