MIAMI — It can happen that quickly, tumble that rapidly. One moment you glance at the scoreboard and the Heat are protecting a slim 30-29 lead, there is an uncomfortable murmur creeping through AmericanAirlines Arena, and the Knicks look prepared to dig in and make this a game, make this a series, make the Heat sweat for their season.
And what feels like an eyeblink later you look up again and it’s 62-31. And that uncomfortable murmur has become a deafening, defiant roll of thunder, and the Knicks don’t look merely overwhelmed but overwrought. And you wonder if the Heat ever will even have to break a sweat in this series.
It can happen that quickly.
“Back to the drawing board,” said Baron Davis, and that’s such an apt slogan describing what the Knicks face across the next 48 hours they ought to make a T-shirt out of it. Whatever the Knicks thought about themselves relative to the Heat at 3:30 yesterday afternoon they can dump in a trash can and light on fire.
Throw all of it out. The Heat thrashed them 100-67 in Game 1 of this Eastern Conference first-round series and actually looked merciful doing it.
“We have to do a better job of everything,” J.R. Smith said.
There were plenty of outside elements that helped bury the Knicks yesterday, sure. Tyson Chandler looked haggard during warm-ups and even more sluggish once the game began, a non-factor except when it came to picking up fouls, one of which flattened LeBron James and inspired the King to re-enact the scene from “The Godfather” where Brando was gunned down in front of the fruit stand.
Carmelo Anthony missed his first seven shots, and after a month when he played at such a rare, rarefied height, he came crashing down in a dreadful 3-for-15 haze, outclassed in every way by James. And if it’s possible to both get your head handed to you fairly and be victimized by a shaky whistle, that’s what happened to the Knicks, who at one point had shot only five free throws to the Head’s 23.
But make no mistake: This was no illusory 33-point blowout. The Knicks were hammered on merit, unable to figure out the Heat’s defense and unable to take advantage of a day when Miami’s offense waited until the very end of the first half to click.
And at the precise moment you may have asked yourself a question — “Can the day get any worse for the Knicks? — that’s when Iman Shumpert turned east and his left knee went west, and he crumpled to the floor in agony, his screams audible 20 rows above the court. Shumpert, who will be out six to eight months after suffering a tear of his left ACL, was only the Knicks’ best hope to muffle and mute Dwyane Wade in this series, and as their best pure athlete was one of the few who could maintain the Heat’s exhausting and exacting pace.
He was carried off the floor. And before that question could be revisited — before Anthony or Chandler or Amar’e Stoudemire could suffer an amputation or be served subpoenas — Mike Woodson performed his own task of mercy and decided to fight again another day.
That day is tomorrow, and if you are an eternal optimist maybe you’ll thumb through your history books and find benchmarks like the famous Memorial Day Massacre, when the Celtics beat the Lakers 148-114 in Game 1 of the ’85 Finals then lost four of the next five. That certainly was the message the Knicks were trying to sell themselves, at least.
“It only counts as one,” Anthony said. “If we come out [tomorrow] and win, it’ll be exactly what we wanted when we came down here. And we can still get it.”
“Monday starts 0-0,” Davis said.
“Just one game,” Woodson said. “Plenty of time to bounce back.”
It’s what they have to say, and how they have to feel, and tomorrow they’ll have the opportunity to back up those hopeful words with actions, at least until the Heat steamroller cranks its engine again. The Heat are imperfect themselves, and for a time yesterday actually seemed vulnerable.
For a time. Then 30-29 became 62-31, and you were reminded how bloody an eyeblink can be when it’s the Heat making you blink.