Carmelo Anthony is mired in a brutal two-game shooting slump.
In the Knicks’ 97-90 overtime loss to the Celtics in Game 4, Anthony shot a miserable 10-for-35, missing 25 shots in a game for the first time in his career. He insisted on Tuesday his shot felt perfectly fine, saying he didn’t think he’d have another 25-miss day.
But in last night’s 92-86 Game 5 loss at the Garden, Anthony was terrible again. He started the night a promising 5-for-7, but then shot an atrocious 3-for-17 the rest of the way, finishing the night 8-for-24. He also missed all five of his 3-point attempts, scoring a series-low 22 points.
In his last two games, Anthony is 18-for-59 from the field and has shot 0-for-12 from 3-point range. In the series overall, he’s now shooting just 39 percent from the field and 29 percent on 3-pointers.
“Mentally, we’re in a great place. We still understand we control our destiny at this point,” Anthony said. “They threw a couple of punches, and now it is time for us to do the same.
“We feel like we can go into Boston and close this series out and that is our mentality.”
Anthony also banged up his left shoulder early in the fourth quarter after he got tangled with Kevin Garnett. Anthony appeared to be in pain, but he stayed in the game and said afterwards he was okay.
“He yanked my shoulder a little bit,” Anthony said. “I’m fine.”
Anthony has delivered a sensational season, taking home his first scoring title and ranking among the MVP candidates. Through the first three games of this series, he was shooting a strong 46 percent (36-for-78). But he’s at 31 percent in the last two contests.
Anthony soared early last night, especially on a driving dunk past Brandon Bass that propelled the Knicks to an 11-0 lead. He finished the first quarter with 12 points, hitting five of his seven shots.
But after that, Anthony missed nine of his next 10 attempts and 14 of his final 17. It was another brutal shooting performance, and he’ll have to try to reverse his shot in Game 6. Or possibly Game 7.