NEW ORLEANS — There are still moments — a few possessions at a time, maybe even a few games at a time — when you can suspend your disbelief for a little while, you can watch Amar’e Stoudemire play basketball, and you can do so without the baggage he carries like a millstone around his neck.
There are still moments when Stoudemire evades his man on the low block when he can still elevate in an eyeblink, before the help can reach him. There are still moments when, thanks to that, a defender leaves him open for an extra half-step, and Stoudemire all but shrugs his shoulders and buries the 17-footer.
There are even moments, if things are timed just right, when he can rise in traffic for a rebound, when he can greet a penetrating guard with an outstretched shot-blocking arm, when he runs the floor without effort or worry or concern. And in those moments, it can still be a treat to watch.
But there are other moments …
Like the uncertainty that creeps into his game so often, clearly unsure if he can shake off a defender. Like the moment Tuesday night in Memphis when, after hitting a couple of jumpers he eschewed a third, tried to take it to the basket, and clumsily ran into the teeth of the Grizzlies defense, where about three different players could have take the charge.
And sometimes — this, truly, is the most heartbreaking of all those moments — he can be both iterations at the same time. Against the Grizzlies, early in the fourth quarter with the Knicks down two, there was a loose ball in a corner and Stoudemire outhustled everyone to track it down, he noted a clear path along the baseline, nothing impeding him to the basket …
He should have dunked.
If he could have dunked.
But by then, the soreness that kept him out of Wednesday night’s game with the Pelicans had clearly started to creep into his knee, and so instead of ending the play the way he has ended thousands of them before, he tried a layup, and he missed the layup, and soon he was on the bench, and soon after the game he was sitting in a corner of the locker with what looked like vacuum tubes attached to both knees.
Hello, darkness, my old friend.
“I’m OK,” Stoudemire said before he departed the arena in Memphis, and in his case “OK” is most definitely a relative term. The Knicks are in the midst of four games in five nights, and it was almost certain Stoudemire wouldn’t play in all four simply out of precaution. Too many pregames these past three years have included diagnoses of Stoudemire out for a few games, out for a few weeks, out for a few months. One game in the middle of a rapidly evaporating season won’t make a ripple.
Except in the big picture. Except if you remember what Stoudemire was in those first few months as a Knick, when he played with abandon, often for 40 and 42 minutes a night, when by himself he helped carry the Knicks back to relevance. It explains why the Garden remains Amar’e country even in the most frustrating times.
It’s why James Dolan, the Knicks owner who committed five years and $100 million to Stoudemire, remains hopeful someday, somehow, Amar’e can steal a few more months out of his youth, and why he flatly rejects the notion he would take a mulligan on that contract if he could.
“I still have hope,” Dolan said in November. “You cannot ask for a guy to be more dedicated, more disciplined, than Amar’e. He does his rehab, he does his workouts, he does everything, he’s on it every day, and that’s worth a lot, too. If there’s justice in this world, his knee will heal up to the point where he can play more minutes and make the contribution he wants to make.”
Ah, but there is rarely justice of that sort, not in a demanding sport, and so Wednesday night there was Stoudemire in his civvies again, one more time with his name next to a stat line that would say “DNP-Did Not Dress.”