The ball was in Kevin Garnett’s hands, and that meant Madison Square Garden was fully, loudly engaged since Garnett has quickly become something of a Bond Villain here over the past two years. Garnett had shaken free of Tyson Chandler, and now he had Bill Walker in his face.
“No!” someone yelled over the Christmas din of 19,763 frantic voices. “Not him! Not him!”
No. Not him. Not the Celtics. Not this time. Garnett’s shot was on line but short. It bounced harmlessly into Chandler’s hands as the buzzer groaned, and Chandler heaved the ball skyward when this 106-104 victory was over, when the fervent and the faithful finally exhaled. You wait 5 1/2 months to see a basketball game, you’re going to have some pent-up anxieties.
“The energy in this place,” Amar’s Stoudmire would say later, “was through the roof.”
Yes, it would be foolish to attach too much significance to what transpired here yesterday. Yes, Paul Pierce was in street clothes for the Celtics. Yes, the Knicks’ problem-child backcourt was on full display yesterday, and Rajon Rondo (31 points, 13 assists) was only too pleased to light a match to it.
Yes, Celtics coach Doc Rivers thought his team was “soft as we could be in the first quarter,” and, yes, the short-handed Celtics outscored the Knicks by a staggering 27 points over one 17-minute stretch. And, yes, the Knicks’ attempts at beefing up their defense were sporadic — “spurts,” was the euphemism Mike D’Antoni used — and far too many hard-fought 23 1/2-second defensive stands were ruined by poor rebounding.
All of that? It’s all fair.
But so is this: It’s hard to imagine last season’s Knicks winning a game like this, certainly not against last season’s Celtics. And it’s harder still to ignore that the two-man foundation around which so much of the Knicks’ aspirations are built looked about 100 percent more comfortable playing together than it ever did last spring.
Stoudemire — 21 points, 8-for-11 shooting and a couple of 3-pointers on the day — actually said this: “It’s an honor to play with him.”
That would be Carmelo Anthony, who across 33 1/2 sublime minutes tried to back up all of his preseason promises that he was done trying to prove, again, that he is one of the best scorers on earth. It seems funny to bring that up after a game in which he scored 37, including 17 of the 27 points the Knicks piled up in the fourth quarter.
But he got those 37 on only 17 shots. And the difference between the 33 1/2 minutes he was on the floor and the 14 1/2 when he was on the bench was only the difference between a team with a right to dream big dreams and one that would fit nicely with all the Garden teams we’ve seen going all the way back to 2000 or so.
“Where we are going to succeed is me making other guys better,” Anthony said. “Making Toney [Douglas] better, making Landry [Fields] better, making Tyson [Chandler] that much better, getting [Stoudemire] in the right position where he can be effective, and then seeing what’s left over for me.”
He paused, and smiled.
“I did that in the fourth quarter,” he said. “I guess that was what was left over for me today.”
We saw a brilliant glimpse of what Anthony could be as a collegian, when he carried Syracuse to an NCAA championship by lifting Hakim Warrick and Gerry McNamara higher than they’d ever been before. And we got a sliver of it last season, Game 2 of the playoffs in Boston, when he stubbornly and single-handedly willed the Knicks just shy of the final buzzer.
“I have no idea how he does it,” D’Antoni marveled. “It’s unbelievable what he does, what Amar’e does. I just enjoy it. Especially when they play for us.”
D’Antoni smiled as he said that. There were a lot of Christmas smiles at the Garden yesterday. The Celtics will be heard from plenty, and there are still 65 games on the long path ahead. Nothing settled yesterday. Nothing proven.
Nothing had to be. It’s a fun group, a fun team. Not a terrible way to make an introduction. Not a bad place to start.