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BOSTON — The Carmelo Anthony bashers can have at it this time all they want, they can come out of the woodwork in force, they can call him an overrated ballhog, they can call him Little Anthony, whatever they please, because he gave them the green light yesterday keeping the Celtics alive the way he did.
Melo took it upon himself to try to take all of his shots and J.R. Smith’s too, tried to carry the Knicks to their first playoff series triumph in 13 years with Smith serving his irresponsible one-game suspension, and dropped them with a thud instead.
It was Raymond Felton who stepped up in Smith’s untimely absence to lead the Knicks back from 20 points down in the third quarter, it was Felton who poured in 16 points in a scintillating third quarter of Feltonsanity to get them to the precipice of sweep revenge, and it was Melo who tried to do too much and did much too little in the Celtics’ 97-90 overtime Game 4 victory.
“When the game is on the line,” Felton said, “you’re going to give the ball to No. 7.”
But here is what No. 7 did with the ball: He scored 36 points. On 35 shots. The other eight Knicks combined for 55 shots. By contrast, Paul Pierce scored 29 points. On 20 shots.
It was a display of one-on-five, let’s-stand-around-and-watch-Melo basketball that undoubtedly had Red Holzman rolling over in his grave, the antithesis of his hit-the-open-man mantra.
For a guy who tells us over and over how much he trusts his teammates, Anthony trusted no one but himself in crunch time, seemingly obsessed with trying to foul out Brandon Bass and Jeff Green and Pierce and maybe Tommy Heinsohn, too.
He missed his last five shots in the last three minutes of regulation, and a pair of free throws with 1:50 left. He was 3-for-10 in the fourth quarter, 1-for-4 in overtime, 10-for-35 overall and 0-for-7 from Jim Boeheim’s backyard. He found out Saturday night that his favorite wingman and his reckless elbow would be unavailable. He knew it was no excuse. Mama said there’d be days like this. Days when you even commit a foolish lane violation with Felton at the free-throw line.
“Honestly, as far as J.R. goes, we miss him, I missed him out there,” Anthony said. “But J.R. being out there doesn’t change the way I shoot the basketball. Those are the shots I’ve been taking the whole series. They weren’t falling tonight.
“My mama always said, ‘There’ll be days like this.’ ”
Mama said there’d be first halves like this too — 3-for-15, the most missed shots in a single half in his playoff career. Bass fouled out, but not before making life physically miserable for Melo. Same with Pierce. Same with Green.
“He’s going to take wild shots,” Green said, “he’s going to take a lot of 3s, he’s going to take a lot of pull-ups. If he was trying to compensate for J.R., I don’t know. But I think we did a good job of forcing him out of his comfort zone and making sure everything was tough.”
Felton passed the baton to Iman Shumpert (10 points) in the final minute of the third quarter and then the fourth quarter. Tyson Chandler finally looked like himself over the last 29 minutes (eight rebounds). Anthony sank a pair of free throws and a left corner J in the overtime, but with the Knicks down 93-90 with 20.4 seconds left, he was way off on a 3, and then missed another one with 12 seconds left.
“It would have been a great feeling to close it out here in Boston so I was trying to do whatever I could to win the basketball game,” Anthony said. “I was just trying to be aggressive. I missed a ton of shots today.”
Now those who chronicle sports miracles, and Beantown romantics, will remind everyone a series can turn dramatically in the blink of an eye, or a Big Papi walkoff home run in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS against the Yankees. These Celtics are no Idiots. But they have plenty of pride. Game 5 for the Knicks is another Game 7 for the Celtics.
“We knew that they were going to fight for their life, which they did today,” Melo said.
He was the one who has given them life.