Carmelo Anthony, despite a rousing introduction he will never forget and crackling electricity the Garden hasn’t seen in a decade, had an off game — until the final moments when the game on the line.
While Amar’e Stoudemire was on the bench, Anthony took over the game, carrying the Knicks to a 114-108 win over the Bucks. He scored six points in the final minute-plus, as the Garden reverberated with the sound of his name, chanted over and over again by the sellout crowd.
“At the beginning, that was a hell of a moment, for the fans to give me that ovation,” said Anthony, who scored six of his game-high tying 27 points in the final 1:18. “That was exciting. I never experienced anything like that, running out, fans going crazy. That whole moment at the beginning, I’ll always remember.”
A Stoudemire charge and John Salmons dunk cut the Knicks’ lead to 104-100, but Anthony drove by Carlos Delfino for a baseline dunk. Stoudemire fouled out and picked up a technical to get the Bucks back within four, but with 26.8 seconds left Anthony hit a seven-foot jumper. And, naturally, after grabbing a defensive board with 11.4 ticks remaining, he iced it with foul shots as the crowd chanted “Mel-O, Mel-O!”
“Early on the game, it was trying to figure it out, run [coach] Mike D’Antoni’s system, fit in with Amar’e and [Landry] Fields and all those guys,” Anthony said. “But in the end, that came down to just basketball right there.”
And scoring the basketball is what Anthony does about as well as anybody in the NBA. Even on a night where he was sleep-deprived, even in a game where he was pressing and shot 10-of-25, when the Knicks needed him, he mustered 11 fourth-quarter points.
“That’s what he does,” D’Antoni said. “If you drop him in any place, any playground in the world, he’ll put up 27 points and 10 rebounds. That’s what he does for a living, and he does it well.”
Anthony said he hadn’t slept for the previous two nights, and was clearly out of sync with his teammates offensively. How he would co-exist with Stoudemire has been a much-scrutinized worry.
“He played great,” Stoudemire said. “He played Carmelo basketball. That’s one thing I wanted him to do, be himself out there, and we’re going to get better.”