MIAMI — Now here was something from Miami coach Erik Spoelstra you had to figure you would never hear.
“It’s documented now their defense is one of the tougher ones in the league,” Spoelstra said as he prepped his Heat for Game 1 of the Eastern Conference first round series with the Knicks Saturday.
Now wasn’t it not too long ago — say, like 25 games or so ago — the Knicks’ defense was viewed as one of the world’s great charitable organizations? “Knick defense” and “sieve” were virtually synonymous.
Then Mike Woodson assumed the coaching throne and for the final 24 games, when the Knicks went 18-6, the defense was one of the league’s best. In those 24 games, the Knicks surrendered 91.5 points per game, a full five points lower than the 96.5 they surrendered in the season’s first 42 games.
But the Knicks’ defense regressed in their 100-67 blowout loss to the Heat in Game 1. One of the reasons for their struggles was that Tyson Chandler, who has been battling the flu, was not 100 percent. He also was in foul trouble throughout the game, playing just 21 minutes.
The Knicks are hoping to have a healthier Chandler for Game 2 Monday night’s, because their defense is anchored around the Defensive Player of the Year candidate. The Knicks finished as the league’s 11th-best defensive outfit overall in terms of points (94.7) and 10th best in field goal defense (.442).
“They’ve been playing their best basketball of the year right now,” Spoelstra said before the game. “It’s one of the few times that they’re almost fully healthy. And they went into the playoffs playing at a high level so you always have to excerpt an opponent that can beat you in a lot of different ways.
“We’ve dealt with Chandler before, but he’s a great anchor back there with his size, but also his IQ. And other guys could be very disruptive on the ball.”
Spoelstra said he wasn’t concerned only with the Knicks on the defensive end. The Knicks have this guy Carmelo, see?
“Offensively, when you’ve got a guy like Anthony who had a month of April like he did, yeah, you have a heightened sense of urgency,” Spoelstra said of Anthony , who averaged 29.8 points in 12 April games, but was held to just 11 points on 3-for-15 shooting from the field on Saturday. “But it’s still about us. We have an incredible amount of excitement and anticipation about what’s ahead of us and that’s what our focus has been, really the past 24 hours since we haven’t had a whole lot of time to do our normal playoff prep.”
fred.kerber@nypost.com