LONDON — You never know. That’s the scary part. That’s what gives a world-class athlete night sweats, wakes him with a jolt in the middle of the night. We hear all the time about modern science, about technology, about the magic a talented doctor with a scalpel can weave.
We see Adrian Peterson come back from a knee injury better than he was before. We see pitchers undergo Tommy John surgery and pick up five miles an hour on the fastball while they’re in rehab. Good stories. Great inspiration.
And still an athlete wonders:
What will it be like for me?
“The way I look at it?” Iman Shumpert said yesterday, after making his season debut at O2 Arena. “If my knee fell apart and collapsed, it’s just not meant to be.”
It didn’t fall apart. It didn’t collapse. Shumpert didn’t even feel sore afterward, the knee wrapped in a precautionary swaddle of ice. He had provided eight points, an assist, a steal and some awfully high energy in just under 15 minutes, helping the Knicks make their transatlantic trip a fruitful one with a 102-87 win over the Pistons
It had been exactly 264 days since he’d fallen in a frightening heap on the floor at Miami’s American Airlines Arena, a torn anterior cruciate ligament and lateral meniscus his reward for a behind-the-back dribble out of pressure.
Shumpert’s rookie season had been an adrenaline rush of high-flying dunks and high-yield defense, his game a potpourri of athleticism and instinct and energy, and all of that collapsed alongside him on the court in South Florida. A player with that much talent, that much skill, so much of it attached to his legs?
You just never know. Even if he refused to let the demons near him.
“Just happy to be wearing the jersey again,” he said.
He wasn’t alone. For the better part of a month, the Knicks have found themselves in one first-quarter bind after another, spotting opponents 10, 12, sometimes 15 points before joining the fray, and that’s a dangerous way to live in the NBA.
So it probably wasn’t a coincidence that yesterday, by the time J.R. Smith reported to the scorer’s table to replace Shumpert, 4 minutes and 34 seconds into the game, it was the Knicks who had the gaudy early lead, 16-2.
“I don’t think I can take credit for that,” Shumpert said, bashfully.
But that was a lonely opinion.
“I’m happy as hell to have him back,” Knicks coach Mike Woodson said. “He brings so much energy and his teammates feed off it. That was one of the first first quarters in a while where we’ve been really good and he had a lot to do with that.”
Said Amar’e Stoudemire: “He gave us a positive burst. That’s what we want from him.”
Carmelo Anthony: “We’ve been looking forward to that.”
The whole season, in many ways, has been a study in looking forward for the Knicks: to Stoudemire’s debut, to Shumpert’s, to Ray Felton’s return, and Rasheed Wallace’s. Thirty-eight games have now passed and the Knicks have won 25 of them, and haven’t had close to the full roster available yet.
But piece by piece, day by day, the fuller picture is coming into view.
“It’s not right to spend too much time stressing about injuries because everyone has them,” Woodson had said the morning his team arrived in the UK. “But I know what’s waiting for us when we’re fully formed.”
And the player Woodson still calls “Rook” is at the very center of those daydreams, because just by stepping on the floor he makes the Knicks younger, edgier, far more dangerous defensively. There was only so much Shumpert could show in 15 minutes, but it was certainly tantalizing: a couple of 3s, a Clyde-style steal-and-layup that conjured the best memories of a year ago.
Best of all was a moment that ended in failure: Shumpert attacking the basket, rising, trying a tomahawk dunk from well outside the key. He missed — the legs aren’t quite there yet — but the fact he even attempted it said more than the result. No fear about the knee. No second thoughts.
“I’ll only think about it if it hurts,” Shumpert said. “And it doesn’t hurt.”
Consider that the second victory the Knicks collected on their school field trip. And maybe the bigger one.
michael.vaccaro
@nypost.com