What a difference a month makes. Around this time in December, the Knicks were getting embarrassed in Cleveland with Kyrie Irving running amuch for 37 points and 11 assists. That was against a Knicks team with no identity. Last night, New York never let the Cavs in it after blitzing them with a 38-21 first quarter, and holding off all comeback attempts over the remaining 36 minutes to take a well-deserved 117-8 6 win at Madison Square Garden. Like all Knicks blowouts this year, it was a total team effort on this one.
JR’S BACK?: After being on the verge of getting shipped out just a few weeks back, JR Smith is finally returning to the excellent form we saw at the end of last season. Starting in place of the injured Iman Shumpert, JR sliced up the Cavs defense with strong drives to the rim and long-range jumpers. It was a case of erratic shots falling — JR played within the offense and shot 8/16 for 19 points, including this collection of breath-taking plays below.
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THJ!!!: Tim Hardaway Jr. continues to shine in his expanded role and thank God Coach Mike Woodson is riding the hot streak. Tim dropped a career high of 29 points, going 11/17 from the field and 6/12 from downtown. Once this kid learns defense, watch out.
EFFICIENT TO THE LAST MAN: Melo (29 points, 5 rebounds), Chandler (11 points, 8 rebounds), and Felton (12 points, 9 rebounds) had good games, along with Jeremy Tyler (8 points, 6 rebounds). The team was shooting over 60% for most of the game while holding the Cavs under 40%. New York would wrap up the contest on 57% shooting from the field and a hot 46% (12/26) from downtown.
The Knicks get to put their win streak to the test against the defending champion Miami Heat on Saturday.
The Knicks put together the best home win of the season last night with a complete team effort in defeating the Heat. After two months, the team (sans JR Smith) finally looks to have turned a corner.
MELO GETS HIS HELP: The question going into every game is who will help Melo with the scoring load. At their worst, the Knicks predictably dump the ball to Melo, many times with less than 10 seconds on the shot clock, for a low-percentage isolation shot.
Outside of the first few possessions, the Knicks were at their best in terms of ball movement, guarding the passing lanes, and attacking Miami’s weak interior defense. Andrea Bargnani (19 points), Iman Shumpert (12 points, 9 rebounds), Amar’e Stoudemire (14 poitns, 11 rebounds) and Raymond Felton (13 points, 14 assists) were the “secondary Big Four” that took the load off Melo and allowed him to operate more freely on offense.
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MELO VS. LEBRON: We didn’t get to see as much of this as we should have. When they did guard each other, Melo got the better of it. LeBron was still able to have a monster stat line (32 points, 5 rebounds, 6 assists) just because he’s the best player in the league, and poor Bargnani found himself switched off onto him way too many times.
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MIAMI HELPS OUT AT THE FREE THROW LINE: The Heat could have made this a tighter game simply by hitting their free throws. They shot a very poor 52% (11/21) with Dwyane Wade being the main culprit (0-6). New York wasn’t any better at 50% (5/10).
TIM HARDAWAY JR: THJ made a new poster at the expense of Jesus Shuttlesworth aka Ray Allen. Yeah, our rookie got game.
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THE 16-0 RUN: After getting embarrassed by a LeBron baseline dunk, Bargnani came right back with a three-point play on Wade to ignite a 9-0 run to end the fourth, highlighted by two Melo treys and Hardaway’s spectacular tip-in dunk. Usually with JR Smith in the 2nd unit lineup that starts the fourth, the Knicks have been giving up leads and momentum. This time, the point guard play of Toure Murry had Bargnani and Stoudemire carving up the Heat in the post and at mid-range.
CLOSING STRONG: When Felton came back in, there wasn’t any drop-off. Ray continued attacking the paint, which collapsed the Heat defense and got nice looks for Melo and Stat. And when Melo got what appeared to be an isolation play, Felton and others cut to basket allowing for easy layups and dunks. Felton also keep the defense honest by hitting several long jumpers.
ROLES DEFINED: The Knicks are finally playing like a team and everyone appears to know their roles. You can see the confidence and they should have it, considering two of their last four wins have come against the defending Eastern and Western Conference champions.
JR SMITH: Our knucklehead shooting guard sulked on the bench most of the night, but did put up an obligatory standing ovation at the final buzzer. In the locker room, he pouted about whether he still has a “future” on the team. We’ll see if JR finally wakes up, but I think he’s earned at least 2 games on the bench.
Before game 2 against the Indiana Pacers, Carmelo Anthony said the disappointing game 1 defeat came down to a lack of effort. The Knicks didn’t have that problem last night, as Melo himself dropped 22 second half points, Iman Shumpert was all hustle, and Pablo Prigioni provided an early fourth quarter spark to give the Knicks a 105-79 blowout and their most impressive win this post-season.
Game 1 left a lot of people wondering if the Knicks were “tough enough” to break down the league’s #1 defense in the Pacers, and NY showed, as they have all season, that they’re a team built on resiliency.
1ST HALF EXECUTION: For the majority of the first half, the Knicks answered the call of hitting shots and providing their own strong defense. They forced the Pacers into multiple turnovers and converted on most of their open shots. With just 3:36 left in the half, the Knicks were up 13 points.
Unfortunately, the Pacer defense combined with some Knick mental lapses left New York scoreless for the rest of the half. The Pacers were able to chip their deficit to only five points (47-42) headed into the third. However, the Knicks had reason to be encouraged, as their lead was predicated on ball movement and balanced contributions as Melo and JR were still struggling from the field.
3RD QUARTER TEST: The Knicks got a legit test over within the first 3-5 minutes of the third. Their shots stopped falling, and the Pacers started to nail three-pointers courtesy of Lance Stephenson and George Hill to take their first lead at 64-62. The crowd was antsy, as there was the fear the Knicks would revert to iso ball and get ran off the court.
Impressively, the Knicks never got rattled, and Melo secured the lead back courtesy of momentum-changing three-point play dunk over Jeff Pendergraph. That play brought new life to the Knicks defense, and on the next Pacer possession a Raymond Felton-Kenyon Martin trap in the backcourt resulted in a turnover and alley-oop dunk. Jason Kidd had another scoreless night, but found other ways to contribute in saving a deflection to find Tyson Chandler for an easy dunk and cap a 10-2 NY run to end the quarter. The Knicks held a 72-66 going into the fourth.
PACERS GET BURIED: The Pacers had been shooting well over 50% for most of the game, but came crashing down to the earth in the last 12 minutes. The Pacers had one of the league’s worst offenses during the season, and it was displayed in all its ugly glory as Indy went 0/11 to start and didn’t score from the field until three minutes were left in the quarter!
While the Pacers struggled, Pablo Prigioni furthered the Knicks run by hitting a pullup three and a short jumper in the lane to extend the lead to 77-66. Chants of “Pablo!” rained down from the Garden crowd, but it would be Melo who finished off the game. Melo had 16 points during an astounding 36-4 run to completely blow the game open to a 92-66 lead.
The last five minutes were garbage time and the starters thankfully got a decent rest. And it’s not like the Pacers got any reprieve when our bench was emptied — Quentin Richardson got in on the run with two treys of his own.
SHUMPERT THE BEAST: I think it’s safe to say Shump is fully back from his ACL tear based on the below play.
There were still some naysayers after Shump’s great play in the last series against Paul Pierce, citing Pierce’s age. This series so far shows Shumpert is coming into his own as a complete player. Once his jumper and finishing at the rim gets more consistent, I have no doubt the Knicks will have a future All-Star. In 28 minutes, Shumpert delivered 15 points (7/11 from the field), 6 rebounds and 1 steal.
ANYTIME NOW, JR: Our Sixth Man of the Year is still in this horrible shooting slump. Last night he went 3/15 from the field (1/7 from downtown). You can tell his confidence is really shaken and even his free throws aren’t a sure thing anymore. Nothing lasts forever, so we just have to patiently wait until he gets out of this. Thankfully, with guys like Felton, Shumpert and Prigioni picking up the slack, and Amar’e Stoudemire returning this weekend, JR doesn’t have overwhelming pressure to get it together. But when he does, the Knicks can potentially blow this series open.
REST!: I normally hate long breaks between games, but this time it’s extremely important to our squad. Melo’s hurt shoulder needs all the rest it can get. The Pacers have made it a point to test it out by hammering Melo in the paint. He was grimacing all throughout the game, but of course hitting his shots made the pain less potent. These three days will also serve to help Tyson Chandler, who you can tell is still battling the lingering effects of the bulging disc in his neck. Remember, the Knicks went right into this series one game removed from eliminating Boston.
Game 3 kicks off this Saturday and should also mark the long-awaited return of Amar’e Stoudemire.
The interior defense. The rebounding. The hard effort over four quarters. There’s many reasons for Knicks fans to rejoice at the 100-83 victory the team achieved tonight over the Spurs. But for now, let’s marvel at this amazing alley oop to punctuate a blowout fourth quarter from Pablo Prigioni to JR Smith. Props to the good people from the Knicks board at realgm.com for getting this up on Youtube so quickly.
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![[Video] Pablo Prigioni’s Sick Alley Oop To JR Smith 1/3/13](https://nykloyalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/image-1.jpg?w=512&h=246&crop=1)
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