OK, so Willis Reed is still safe. The pain in Reed’s hip was probably a little sharper than the ache in Carmelo Anthony’s groin, the needle a little longer in 1970, the stakes far higher. This wasn’t Game 7 of the Finals with a title on the table, merely Game 51 of a lockout-cleaved season with a chance to gaze the northern side of .500 for the first time since mid January 16.
Still, Carmelo Anthony needed a night like this, and a moment like this, and the Knicks needed him to have both, too. He needed to show his teammates that, yes, they can count on him to deliver now that the season has reached the desperate hours, the fact that he did it while wincing and grimacing and limping — that sent a message to Knicks fans, too.
Steve Novak was the first one to hear it, sitting in the training room with Melo early in the day, watching him get treatment, seeing him flash something part smile, part snarl.
“I’ll stay in here as long as I need to stay in here to be ready tonight,” Anthony said
And then he was.
He was 25 points on 9-for-15 shooting, he was inside and he was outside, he was a terror in the low post and even knocked down a couple of 3-point jumpers, possibly announcing the end of a prolonged shooting slump.
Mostly, on a night when the Knicks needed him to flash his all-star credentials the
way a major-case detective presents his shield, he did that across 26 minutes and 19 seconds of his most memorable time as a Knick.
The Knicks cruised 108-86 over the Magic, they snuck to 26-25 on the season, a winning record for the first time since the day after the Giants beat the Packers. They are now 2 ½ games ahead of the Bucks for the last playoff spot and 2 1/2 behind the 76ers for first place in the Atlantic.
Somehow, after so many winning streaks and losing streaks, after one jettisoned coach and one universal phenomenon and devastating injuries and more slings and arrows than you can count, the Knicks are playing their very best basketball of the season.
No coincidence here: Carmelo Anthony is, too.
“They have Carmelo Anthony, and he’s one of the best in the game,” Orlando’s Dwight Howard said. “They play the right way. They get it to their guy with the mismatch” – Anthony went to school on Ryan Anderson all night – “and he makes the correct passes and he plays hard.”
After three months when it seemed he could do no right, suddenly Melo can do no wrong. He scored 28 against the Bucks in a had-to-have-it on Monday, dominated last night in limited minutes, even snuck off the bench to the warm-up bike when the Magic used a 23-3 run to slice 20 points off a 39-point lead, though he was never summoned once he left with 3:19 left in the third.
“Times like this, this is always fun,” Anthony said later on, insisting his facial expressions were a reaction to [ital] anticipating [ital] pain more than reacting to it. “Right before the playoffs, games like tonight, games like the one against Milwaukee … who wouldn’t want to play that type of basketball game?”
His teammates noticed, and for perhaps the first as a Knick time it was evident just how far Melo’s talent and his will can go toward inspiring them. Baron Davis, starting for Jeremy Lin while Lin nurses a sore knee back to health, shared the exercise bike with Anthony all night and nearly succumbed to the dull aches in his back and his hamstrings.
“You see Melo grinding,” Davis said, “and it makes you want to fight through what you have to fight through, too.”
Suddenly, those weren’t groans echoing across the Garden whenever the ball found Anthony in the low post, they were loud spasms of hope. He’s no ball-stopper, at least not for now. He is a presence. He is a force. He is hurting and playing anyway, and playing well, and if this wasn’t Willis Reed staggering out of the old tunnel, it was still exactly what the Knicks needed. And continue to need.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com