Clearly, Carmelo Anthony longs to have two of the Knicks’ key injured players back on the court. Actually, three of the Knicks’ key injured players.
“I miss Amar’e [Stoudemire]. I miss Iman [Shumpert]. [Baron Davis] is not even here yet. I miss him, too,” Anthony said yesterday. “But the guys that are out there, we just want them to keep playing with the confidence that they have.”
Anthony and the Knicks will likely welcome Stoudemire and Shumpert back tonight to restore nearly the team’s full rotation. Stoudemire has missed the past two games with a sprained left ankle, and Shumpert has missed the past four games with a sprained right MCL.
Each is listed as questionable, and Mike D’Antoni said they’ll be game-time decisions tonight when the Knicks play the Bobcats at Madison Square Garden. Davis is out indefinitely with a back injury.
Still, the coach said it’s promising.
“Game-time decisions. But it looks good,” D’Antoni said yesterday after practice. “We’ll see reactions and all that, but they feel a lot better.”
The Knicks (2-3) need both players back immediately. Stoudemire’s value speaks for itself since he’s one of the best players in the league. Shumpert, too, is a critical piece. The rookie first-round pick out of Georgia Tech is essentially the Knicks’ sixth man, able to handle both backcourt positions and work as part of a four-guard rotation with starters Toney Douglas and Landry Fields and backup point guard Mike Bibby.
How important is Shumpert?
“Iman, believe it or not, he’s kind of a game changer for us,” Anthony said, decorating Shumpert with high praise. “Coming off the bench, the energy that he brings. Offensively, defensively. Still a long way to go with him. And it’s still a learning process for him. But for the most part, that’s something we’ve been missing — that energy level coming off the bench. He brings that.”
Shumpert sprained his MCL against the Celtics in the season opener and has not played since. The 21-year-old scored 11 points on 3-for-13 shooting versus Boston, adding four rebounds in 22 minutes.
At practice yesterday, the Knicks only did a walk-through. Shumpert, though, said he had a taxing workout in addition to that and declared, “Everything felt good. Everything felt stable.” He and Stoudemire also participated in a 3-on-3 game with Steve Novak, Renaldo Balkman, Jerome Jordan and Jeremy Lin, and both Shumpert and Stoudemire looked fluid.
Shumpert will wear a knee brace for several weeks when he returns. He insists it does not inhibit him, saying, “It doesn’t really restrict any athleticism from me. It sort of just keeps it in place, just in case I was to hyperextend it, anything like that.”
Shumpert and Bibby have not played together this season, raising the question of who will run point when they are on the court at the same time. D’Antoni said they’re interchangeable.
“They’ll divide it,” he said. “It’ll kind of evolve naturally and we’ll see. But they can each play the two and they can both shoot it. They can both run the offense.”
They can both also find Stoudemire. He said he will have the ankle looked at this morning and again in pregame tonight.
“I feel good,” he said. “[Yesterday] was a great indication on how my ankle feels. I came out, was able to practice a little bit [yesterday]. We didn’t do much as far as physical play, but I was able to get out there and step the foot back on the basketball court and see how it feels. Still a game-time decision.”