OAKLAND — Carmelo Anthony played last night in the Knicks’ 92-63 loss to the Warriors, but what condition his knee will be in the rest of the season still is a question, as is the cause of his knee stiffness.
Anthony, who scored 14 points last night on 4-of-15 shooting, said he doesn’t know if he’ll be 100 percent any time soon, but claimed he has not been told he will need offseason knee surgery due to cartilage wear and tear.
“This was always the plan of me coming back on this road trip, to use this last week to get more rest and try to start off fresh for this road trip,’’ Anthony said. “I don’t think I’ll ever be 100 percent to be honest with you, but I will play.”
Anthony also plans to play tomorrow in Denver in his first return to the city where he opened his NBA career. The week off, in which he missed three games, will at least have him in a better way than had he played through the knee injury.
“I wasn’t concerned about that,’’ Anthony said. “I’m very happy to go back [to Denver] and play. If I wasn’t able to play, I wouldn’t have been upset about missing that game.’’
When asked about if it will be special, Anthony said, “Just to go back, I started my career there. I spent 7 1/2 years of my career. I did so much in that city. For me to go back not wearing a Denver Nugget jersey, there’ll be some mixed emotions with me. It was a new beginning when I started out there. There’s a lot of emotions.’’
And a lot of curiosity about his knee. The fluid and knee stiffness can be due to the flaking off of cartilage, according to medical experts. Anthony said he can’t get an answer on what the injury is exactly, but so far he has not been told offseason surgery is needed. He had arthroscopic surgery on his left knee after the 2010-11 season to clean out loose cartilage.
“There’s no pain at all. Just stiffness,’’ Anthony said at San Francisco’s Olympic Club. “Nobody really can give me an exact answer on it. Because there’s no pain or ligament damage. Just fluid in the back of the knee that’s prevented me from hyperextending my leg. Nothing of that nature. None of that. No surgery.
“Just a matter of getting tight in the back of the knee. Nothing in the front of the knee. No pain. No soreness. Just some irritation.’’
Anthony said he still has some swelling.
“I used this week to really try to get healthy, get my legs back, get the soreness out,’’ Anthony said. “I don’t think [the fluid] is completely gone. But with the rest, sitting out a couple of days, getting treatment, I definitely benefitted.’’
In light of Amar’e Stoudemire’s impending knee surgery, coach Mike Woodson has said he wants to keep Anthony to 35 minutes, tops, the rest of the season. Anthony didn’t sound crazy about the idea. Stoudemire was on a 30-minute cap, but went slightly over it last week. It may be no coincidence that after a three-game stretch in which Stoudemire set season highs in minutes in two of them, he came up lame.
“I don’t know,’’ Anthony said. “We got to see how the game goes. If I come back to play, I come back to play. If he wants to limit my minutes, I’m all for it. But when I come back to play, I come back to play.’’
Woodson won’t fight it.
“I would like to do that,’’ Woodson said. “These guys, you put minute restrictions, they get a little testy. I’ll kind of do what he wants to do.’’
Anthony departed the Cleveland game last Monday after he took a fall with the Knicks down 22 points. The Knicks rallied for the win. Anthony said he had been bothered by the injury the past couple of weeks but played through it. Anthony thinks the original injury occurred all the way back when he hyperextended the knee on Christmas against the Lakers but that was believed to be the left knee, not the right. Anthony has already missed 10 games this season.
Now Stoudemire is out at least six weeks and could be out until the second round of the playoffs.
“Take away the basketball aspect, just for him as person, mentally and emotionally to go through the roller coaster ride, to work so hard to get back to where he was at and to take a step backwards, I feel bad for him,’’ Anthony said. “As a person. I know he’s going through a lot trying to figure out why it’s always him.
“We’ve been in this situation before where we waited for him. The most important thing is for him to get healthy. We’re going to miss him. We need him. He was a big part of what we had going on. He worked his way back to being the Amar’e that everybody knows. He was given us a lot of production coming off that bench.’’