For the first time all season, the Knicks played a game Sunday with an unfamiliar word attached to the situation.
“It was a tough day, it was a tough night [Saturday] night,” said Carmelo Anthony, who like all the Knicks knew NBA reality had stuck a fork in their ever-so-slim playoff hopes on Saturday. “Even though you’re not playing for nothing you still, if you suit up, you still have to go out there and play ball.
“There’s so much going on right now. Me never being in this situation before, not knowing how to feel or what to feel right now. It’s going to take a minute for me to kind of decompress and kind of come back down to earth a little bit,” said Anthony, who insisted what went on this season will not determine his future.
“All this stuff will come into consideration. But I won’t never make it seem like because of this season I’m going to become a free agent,” Anthony said. “It has nothing to do with [how] this season went. Even if we had the greatest of a season I probably would still be in that situation.”
And so the first of three games in which the Knicks had nothing on the line ended as a 100-89 victory over the Bulls, who had far more at stake. Oh, there were pointless performances by the team and individuals throughout the season, but never was there nothing to play for from the Knicks’ perspective.
“Nobody was expecting this. You can point the fingers in a lot of directions,” said coach Mike Woodson, who again threw himself under the bus. “It’s my responsibility as the coach to get this team in the playoffs and I didn’t get it done.”
Anthony, who had never missed the playoffs before in his career, observed that a coach is supposed to say the things that Woodson said. And Anthony tried to shoulder blame himself — on a night an aching shoulder, or nothing to play for, could not keep him off the floor, although he did sit out the fourth quarter.
“We all are part of that,” Anthony said in response to Woodson’s claim. “As a coach he’s going to say that — he’s supposed to say that. I would say the same thing. I would put it on my shoulders and say the same thing.
“We all played a part of this year. Beginning of the season, nobody ever thought we would be in this situation, in this position that we in right now. So for him to take all that pressure on him, I know what he’s feeling. I do the same thing [but] there’s no need for him to do that. All 12 of us, all 13 of us was part of this.”
Tim Hardaway Jr. scored 20 points as Anthony and J.R. Smith scored 17 each for the Knicks, who dropped the Bulls into a tie for third with Toronto. With the Raptors owning the tie-breaker through a division lead, the Bulls currently are positioned to play the Nets.
Wow, this kind of excitement is numbing, huh? Too bad Anthony is out of all this positioning and plotting fun.
“We’re in this situation we’re in right now, nothing we can do about it. We’ve got to figure it out,” said Anthony, who repeatedly insisted it is too hard to even think of next season — or next week for that matter.
Even with their playoff drive officially ended by Atlanta’s win Saturday, the Knicks presented a brave face on some fronts.
“On paper we might be the best team in the league,” said Amar’e Stoudemire who, rather than claim expectations were too high, believed they were not high enough. “We’ve got great players on this team who accomplished so much. We just couldn’t put it together.”
In the end, the boast, like the Knicks last three games, goes meaningless.
“Anytime you’re in New York the expectations will always be high, will always be twice as high,” Anthony said. “So it’s just a matter of us as players to go out and meet those expectations. This year we didn’t meet those expectations.”