It’s been a grind for Amar’e Stoudemire through the Carmelo Anthony rumor mill, waiting for Wilson Chandler, Landry Fields and Danilo Gallinari to either ship out or shape up before the trading deadline.
Stoudemire had to be scratched from the lineup because of a sprained right big toe. With 2:55 to play last night, and the Knicks hanging on by one, Chandler didn’t look like he was worried about not having a contract for next season. He penetrated and dished to Landry Fields, who no longer appeared to be paralyzed with the fear of ending up in Denver when he nailed a corner three.
The Knicks, with Fields hitting the dagger from the opposite corner with 49 seconds left, pulled away to record just their fifth win in their last 16, 105-95, at the Prudential Center like they didn’t have a care in the world. Chandler and Fields each had three of the Knicks’ 16 threes, raising both their play and the question of why they weren’t making them more regularly when Stoudemire needed help to win a few more games.
“If you lose [without your star] there’s a built-in excuse,” Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni said. “It takes pressure off.
“It’s like, let’s just see what we can do,” he said. “If it doesn’t work, nobody will say [anything]. Lots of times a guy comes out, the team plays better for one game. Then after one or two [things turn for the worse]. . .”
There are just two more games for the Knicks before the trading deadline will have passed, making the distraction issue as moot as Stephon Marbury. In the meantime, the Knicks and their fans can chill in the knowledge that of all the rumors they are hearing, the most unreliable is that either Charlotte or Milwaukee is a playoff team.
The Knicks, with a five-game cushion on the ninth-place Bobcats, remain far more secure than any apartment rental security deposit in Chandler’s or Fields’ name.
With or without Carmelo Anthony, the Knicks will settle down after that deadline and make the playoffs. With or without him, they still will need a defensive presence to succeed in those playoffs.
Therefore, there’s not an urgency to get Anthony here sooner rather than later, unless of course, team president Donnie Walsh feels it from owner Jim Dolan. It would be only under the false assumption the Knicks could do serious damage this spring that Walsh would trade good assets to acquire a player he can sign in July as a free agent.
Considering that the Knicks would have Stoudemire and Anthony learning to defer to each other, have kids who never have never been in the playoffs and are Team Funnel to their own basket, the concept of knocking off somebody good in April is as big a stretch as Anthony staying in Denver.
This week’s suggestion that Anthony might take the Nuggets three-year offer if not traded by the deadline was almost as transparent a threat as any Knick raising his hands in basic defensive position. Anthony wants out to New York sooner, but he will come later.
In the meantime, with or without him, the Knicks’ schedule has just 11 of 29 remaining games with teams clearly better than the Knicks — three with Orlando, two with Boston and one each with Chicago, Dallas, Utah, New Orleans, Miami and Atlanta. The light schedule will put them into the playoffs.
After Feb. 24, the guys with the jitters will either be gone or relaxed. The Knicks will resume outscoring the bad teams like they did last night and losing to the powerhouses because trade rumors are not the only thing this team can’t stop.