PHILADELPHIA — Carmelo Anthony owes Toure’ Murry a headband.
With Friday’s game against the 76ers safely in hand, or so he thought, Anthony ditched his own headband on the bench. But when the Sixers rallied and he was summoned to re-enter with 32.5 seconds left after having exited at 4:19, he needed a headband.
“My headband was off. So that goes to tell you. That’s only because I have confidence in the guys that are on this team when we get in situations like that, that they can close the game,” said Anthony.
But they didn’t. So he turned to Murry.
“I just looked at him,” Anthony said,” “[and] he was like, ‘You sure?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I need it just for a couple of seconds.’ ”
April has a potentially brutal schedule for the Knicks. And if they can endure that and make the playoffs, there may be help: Kenyon Martin and Andrea Bargnani could be back at some point.
“Kenyon, he’s starting to feel better. He’s not on the floor yet. Bargnani is on the floor running, but he hasn’t been able to do any contact or anything like that,” coach Mike Woodson said. “So all we can do is keep winning and try to prolong the season for these guys to make it back. So [if] we’re able to get in the playoffs, they hopefully should be ready.”
Martin has not played since Feb. 1 because of a bum left ankle. Bargnani tore a left elbow ligament Jan. 22.
The theme for the game Friday was do not take the Sixers lightly.
“At my age of 31 it would be extremely tough to go through it,” Amar’e Stoudemire said of the losing skid. “These guys are very young so they have a long career ahead of them.”
Stoudemire scored 22 to continue his recent surge: he has averaged 18.5 points in his last eight games, all starts, and the Knicks are 7-1 in those games.
Woodson said Jackson “absolutely” was involved in the decisions regarding the 10-day contract guys, Shannon Brown, who was kept for the remainder of the season, and Earl Clark who was released.
“It just didn’t work out with Earl. We like Shannon and Shannon’s going to be with us the rest of the way. We’ve got an open spot, so we’ll see how it works out,” said Woodson who stressed it was uncertain what the Knicks would do with the open roster spot. “We’ll probably just sit on it and see where we are. We’re pretty healthy right now.”