IF YOU heard coach Mike Woodson talk before last night’s game against the Magic at the Garden, you would think the Knicks were a team filled with young legs, and young energy.
“The foundation of our team is the younger players,” Woodson said. “The older guys have just got to fill in and do their part and help us continue to win.”
The younger players Woodson was referring to include Raymond Felton, J.R. Smith, Carmelo Anthony, Tyson Chandler, Iman Shumpert, Amar’e Stoudemire and Steve Novak. All are 30 or younger. Everyone else, according to Woodson, is filler, which is why he’s not overly concerned about the status of any of his older players other than 39-year-old Jason Kidd.
“The veteran guys were just a piece to a puzzle that weren’t going to play a lot of minutes,” Woodson said.
He was talking about Kidd, Marcus Camby (38), Rasheed Wallace (38), Kurt Thomas (40) and Pablo Prigioni (35). Woodson’s thinking seemed valid last night after the Knicks overcame a poor start defensively to handle the Magic 113-97. With Kidd unavailable due to a sore back, Chandler led six Knicks in double-figures with 21 points.
The old guard wasn’t needed on this night. But Woodson is fooling himself if he believes injuries to his older players can’t sabotage their chance of winning an NBA Championship.
Camby and Wallace have been out for most of the year with foot injuries. And though they weren’t supposed to log big minutes, it’s clear the Knicks are a better team when they’re in uniform.
Wallace’s post defense and 3-point shooting have been missed, especially during a stretch where the offense has become too dependent on Anthony (20 points) for scoring. When he plays, Camby still has the ability to grab rebounds and convert an occasional jumper. All those are skills that will be needed down the stretch of the season and in the playoffs.
Kidd is the most pressing concern. After averaging nearly 30 minutes of playing time per game, his back is now a troublesome issue.
Woodson admitted that though minutes for Kidd, Wallace and Camby always figured to be limited, not having them in the lineup isn’t good because “you have to groom them and play them to keep their skills sharp.”
It seems the Knicks are forever waiting to get healthy. First it was Shumpert recovering from offseason knee surgery, then Stoudemire injured his knee during training camp. Camby and Wallace only made cameo appearances before Felton went down with his finger injury. Now Kidd is on the shelf.
“We’ve had our ups and downs in terms of injuries,” Woodson said. “But we’ve still been able to maintain and stay in the position we set out to stay in and that’s atop of our division.”
The hope is that Wallace and Camby will return soon after the All-Star break, and Woodson can begin to figure out rotations and minutes in preparation for the spring. Right now, the coach always seems to be in patch-work mode, last night starting James White at small forward ahead of rookie Chris Copeland or Stoudemire.
“It’s kind of a feel thing for me,” Woodson said about his starting line-ups.
The feeling wasn’t mutual as White, along with Felton and Shumpert, played terrible perimeter defense in the first quarter when the Magic shot 61.9 percent. For the game, Orlando guards Jameer Nelson and J.J. Redick torched the Knicks for a combined 50 points.
“We gotta get better in that area,” Woodson said of the Knicks defense.
Clearly, the Knicks have enough to build a fine regular-season record and beat teams like the Magic. But in order to make a deep run in the playoffs, they will need their elder statesmen like Kidd, Wallace and even Camby to be productive. They can’t depend solely on the foundation of youth.
george.willis@nypost.com