Mike Vaccaro

Mike Vaccaro

NBA

Knicks should stop messing with Iman Shumpert

PROVIDENCE , R.I. — The Knicks were creaking toward ignominy, the Pacers fixing to blast them clear out of Bankers Life Fieldhouse. The litany of woes was endless: injury and ineffectiveness and age, blended with an Indiana team on a mission. Carmelo Anthony was working solo, and that wasn’t enough.

And then, remarkably, he wasn’t.

Then, suddenly, out of the Midwestern sky, Iman Shumpert stepped up to play the most remarkable 420 seconds of his young career. There were 7 ½ minutes left in the third quarter, Paul George had just nailed a 20-foot jumper to nudge the Pacers to a 67-56 lead, and the Fieldhouse was already in a throaty uproar, eager to dismiss the Knicks and welcome the Heat.

Then Shumpert knocked down a 20-foot jumper. And then a 27-foot 3. And a 25-foot 3. George Hill missed a long one, and Shumpert squared up again, 26 feet away, swished another 3. Eleven points in less than four minutes, and the Knicks were within one. Two free throws followed. And another 3, this one with 48 seconds left. It was tied, 79-79. The Fieldhouse was church still.

“He stepped up and made plays to get us back in the game,” Knicks coach Mike Woodson recalled Wednesday morning, maybe eight hours before the Knicks would beat the Celtics 103-102 in their exhibition opener at Dunkin’ Donuts Center. “And he put us in a position to possibly win it coming down the stretch. That was huge for Iman.”

It felt bigger for the Knicks, even if the Pacers owned the fourth quarter, even if Roy Hibbert met Carmelo Anthony at the basket with five minutes left in the game and all but ushered New York from the Eastern Conference semifinals. For parts of two seasons we’d all seen the flashes of brilliance Shumpert could provide, interspersed with moments of frailty and others of futility.

But if this was what he was capable of …

“I know what I’m capable of,” Shumpert said.

He was walking away from the team’s morning shootaround, a bag of ice wrapped around his left knee, a reminder of both the major injury that kept him out of action for 8 ½ months and the minor aches, pains and recurrent soreness that sidetracked him this summer and have limited his ability to go all-out so far in training camp.

Woodson had just announced a starting lineup without Shumpert in it, and that’s at a point in the season when J.R. Smith isn’t yet available. And Woodson has already declared his interest in putting Smith, the league’s top sixth man a year ago, in the starting lineup, maybe making Shumpert come off the bench. He reaffirmed that possibility Wednesday.

If that bothers Shumpert he wasn’t letting on: “Wherever Woody says he wants to put me, I’m fine.” And in the game he underlined those words with a stat line right out of Game 6: 7-for-7 from the floor, 1-for-1 from the line.

And he also clearly remembers Game 6, understands that somewhere within him may well lie a dynamic two-way player that could be an answer to so many Knicks prayers if he’s allowed to breathe, if Shumpert is capable of summoning that inner force regularly.

“I just want there to be a new scouting report on me,” he said, choosing glib over glum. Later, after his perfect shooting night, he would add: “I changed when I came into the league, backed off a little. But that’s not who I am. I’m aggressive. This is more like me.”

That means delivering on the tease of Game 6, it means retaining the defensive instincts he showed from the first seconds of his pro career and adding the kind of explosive offense that nearly left the city of Indianapolis speechless. It means embracing his newfound status as a relied-upon veteran — no longer does Woodson call him “Rook” anymore.

But it also means Woodson, notoriously slow to embrace any player without an already-established pedigree, will need to become a lot more enthused about Shumpert’s potential than he seems thus far, lobbing passive-aggressive grenades that hint he’s not as sold by what he saw last spring as some others.

Still, Woodson said: “I’m expecting big things from him.”

Said Shumpert: “I need to be a little more aggressive.”

The Knicks need that. They need more scorers. They need more presence. They need someone to be a good foxhole guy for Melo, and who better than Shumpert, who did as much as he could last May to drag the basketball season back to New York City with him.