Forgive the Knicks if they are looking around suspiciously. Too much is going right lately.
The Knicks have won five games in a row and for Saturday’s noon start against Milwaukee they expect to have both of their key big men — Tyson Chandler and Amar’e Stoudemire — available. Chandler missed two games because of a family illness, and Stoudemire received one of his periodic rest days for the last game, Wednesday, in Boston.
“Amar’e will play tomorrow and Tyson will be playing tomorrow as well, so I’m happy about that,” coach Mike Woodson said after practice Friday.
Stoudemire said he feels “great” and that the rest was beneficial for him — and two days off between games certainly helps the team.
“It worked out well,” Stoudemire said. “We got the win in Boston. This is something we’ve been talking about all year, so it’s nothing new. So I’m fine with it.
“It’s great. Not only for myself. But as a team we got two days off of rest and recovery, so it works out well for us. Going into an early game tomorrow, we’ve got to make sure we bring that intensity from the start.”
Early games have not been kind to the Knicks this season. Five times they played games that began at either noon or 1 p.m. Five times they lost.
Those defeats — to the Spurs, Celtics, Grizzlies, Thunder and Bulls — have come by a total of 111 points.
“Don’t remind me,” Carmelo Anthony said of the early bombs.
Well, it seemed sort of pertinent, what with the Knicks playing the Bucks at noon.
“It’s everybody’s mental approach and at this particular time in the season, we have no room for error,” Woodson said. “So everybody’s got to be ready to play.
“[The game] is just more mental than anything. We’ve got to come out from the gate and push ourselves through it, not try to think and put it in our minds that it’s an early game.We can’t do nothing about the early game at this point, so we might as well come out and try to get it going early.”
One thing the Knicks have shown this season: they can lose to anybody. They lost to the Bucks in Milwaukee last month, so Anthony said the Knicks are focused on grabbing the game from the start.
“In the past we’ve given Milwaukee a lot of confidence, and it came back sometimes to bite us down the stretch. Tomorrow, we can’t do that,” Anthony said. “We can’t give them guys [any] confidence. We want to come out and just continue doing and building on what we have been trying to do these last games.”