MIAMI — Carmelo Anthony made a promise for next season, not guaranteeing specific postseason success but declaring 2012-13 will be a better campaign for the Knicks.
“Next year we’ll be better,” Anthony said after the Knicks fell to the Heat 106-94 in Game 5, last night ending their season and killing their postseason in the first round. “We’ll be much better, as a unit. Not just me and Amar’e [Stoudemire] but as a team, as a group, we’ll be much better.
“We’ll learn from this. We’ll come back next year and be ready.”
Anthony had a strong game again last night, following up his 41-point Game 4 explosion with a 35-point barrage. He sank 15-of-31 shots and pulled down eight rebounds. There isn’t much to blame on Anthony over the last two games.
That said, Anthony and Stoudemire — the team’s captains and stars — are now 0-2 in the playoffs in their two postseasons with the Knicks. They have three more years apiece on their contracts, so there’s still time for them to deliver greater postseason success.
Still, barring something unforeseen, Anthony and Stoudemire are going to have to go through Miami in order to achieve that success. Is that possible? There will be changes on this Knicks team, but can the Anthony/Stoudemire/Tyson Chandler core overtake the LeBron James/Dwyane Wade/Chris Bosh squad?
“I feel confident in my team and where we’re headed,” Anthony said. “In the future, I feel good about competing with the top teams in the Eastern Conference. I do consider our team being up there, top-three, top-four teams in the East. We’ve just got to get better and go from there.”
Anthony finished this series averaging 27.8 points on 41.9 percent (52-for-124) shooting. He was terrible in Games 1-3, then excellent in Games 4-5. So he deserves credit for his final two performances but blame for his first three.
“Now that we can remove ourselves from the series,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said, “I don’t know how you stop that guy.”
— Additional reporting by Fred Kerber
mark.hale@nypost.com