BOSTON — With Pablo Prigioni out in Game 1, Jason Kidd was terrific. He logged 35 minutes, scored eight points and racked up three fourth-quarter steals.
Yesterday the Knicks were again missing one of their key guards — J.R. Smith because of a one-game suspension. Kidd again played heavy minutes; however, his production wasn’t there.
Especially his scoring.
In almost 37 minutes of action in the Knicks’ 97-90 overtime loss to the Celtics, Kidd went scoreless, missing all three of his shots from the field. The future Hall of Fame guard also didn’t notch any steals, though he grabbed nine rebounds.
Other than Quentin Richardson (who played just 2:46) and Boston’s Chris Wilcox (43 seconds), Kidd was the only player yesterday to go scoreless.
Starters Raymond Felton and Iman Shumpert were terrific in supplying production in Smith’s absence, but the Knicks’ bench did little. Without Smith’s scoring, the Knicks received a total of just seven points from four reserves — Kidd, Richardson, Steve Novak (three points) and Kenyon Martin (four). The group shot a collective 3-for-12.
“In the second quarter we had some great looks but we just couldn’t put the ball in the basket,” Kidd said. “Our bench, scoring-wise, we did miss J.R. in that sense.”
The 40-year-old Kidd has gone scoreless several times this season, and the Knicks don’t count on him for a major scoring punch, thus asking him to replicate Smith’s offense is unfair. With Smith out, however, Kidd’s lack of scoring was magnified. And the three shots he did take, including two from 3-point range, he missed.
With Smith out, the likely replacement for his minutes figured to be either James White or Chris Copeland. Richardson, though, surprisingly got the nod from coach Mike Woodson instead. The veteran, who was just signed in the season’s final week, missed two shots in three minutes in the second quarter and was through for the afternoon. Neither Copeland nor White played.
“I’m not using [Smith’s absence] as an excuse. We had enough tonight,” Woodson said. “J.R. is a big piece of what we do, but he wasn’t here tonight, so I’m not using that as an excuse.”
Added Shumpert, “We lose a lot not having J.R., but we’ve got to pick it up.”