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The Garden will be an inferno today as the scorching Heat look for revenge and the Knicks look to find their sizzle from November and December.
The Knicks torched the Miami Dream Team by 20 points in their season opener. In December, the Knicks were on fire from 3-point range in a 20-point win in Miami.
The Knicks and Heat haven’t met in three months, during which the Heat regained their defending-champion bravado. They tango again today at 1 p.m. amid the Garden cauldron with a lot at stake.
“They know we got them here and then embarrassed them in their house,’’ Tyson Chandler said. “So we expect them to come in fired up. They’re the champs for a reason.’’
“There’s waves in the season,’’ Chandler added. “We were hot then, they could be hot now. It goes up and down with the season.’’
Miami coach Erik Spoelstra said the Knicks “annihilated us’’ in the past two meetings — surely words imbedded into the Heat’s psyche.
“They’re looking at it as, twice they beat us pretty bad, so they’re going to come in ready to play,’’ Raymond Felton said.
LeBron James and Co. have won 13 in a row. The Knicks have won three straight after a four-game losing streak. Once the leaders of the East, the Knicks (35-20) have fallen 6 1/2 games behind Miami and the championship talk has died down. It could ramp up again if the Knicks go to 3-0 against Miami.
“It’s always good to even the score out,’’ James said. “We’re a team that loves going against teams that have beaten us before. It’s going to be an unbelievable atmosphere on Sunday. They’re a really, really good home team. We look forward to the challenge.’’
James has taken off as the undisputed leading MVP candidate, far surpassing Carmelo Anthony. James won Player of the Month for February — the fourth straight month he has won it. In February, James averaged 29.7 points per game on 64.1-percent shooting, 7.8 assists, 7.5 rebounds and 1.8 assists.
“We will be prepared for Miami,’’ Anthony said. “We know they have a hell of a hot streak. The guys on their team are playing extremely well. At the end of the day, we worry about ourselves. We control our own destiny.’’
Woodson will try to keep Anthony away from having to guard James. It’s partly why he made the starting lineup switch Friday in Washington, inserting defensive specialist James White for Jason Kidd. White will try to set a tone early by limiting James after playing good minutes against him in December when Anthony was out.
Iman Shumpert, regarded as the key to beating Miami in the playoffs, will get Dwyane Wade. Over the past two games, Shumpert finally is looking like himself on defense.
“I’m not trying to play so safe,’’ Shumpert said. “I’m back to having fun. I like them to tell me: That’s the best guy. We need you to stop him. It gives me confidence they look at me like, ‘Shump, we need you to guard LeBron [or] D-Wade.’”
In the first two meetings, there was no Shumpert or Amar’e Stoudemire, but the Knicks were a torrid 3-point shooting club. In the Dec. 6 meeting, they drained 18 3-pointers and Felton scored 27 points. The Knicks’ 3-point prowess has waned (from 40.7 percent on Dec. 6 to 35.3 now). Coach Mike Woodson admits he still is “figuring out’’ rotations.
“It will be a big game for us,’’ Chandler said. “We’ll see where we are heading to the playoffs. It’s more for us than them. They’re the world champions, and that didn’t happen for any fluke.”
The goal is to meet Miami again in the playoffs, when Anthony feels he has a better cast.
“Our team is much better than we were last year with the veterans we have,” he said.
The heat is on.
marc.berman@nypost.com