It's been almost two years since the New York Knicks made the trade that brought superstar Carmelo Anthony to play alongside fellow superstar, Amar'e Stoudemire.
The results of the two playing on the court together have been more negative than positive. Many will make the case that New York is a better team without Stoudemire. The team certainly didn't miss his presence for the first two months of this season as they raced off to a 19-6 start without him. Anthony played like the MVP of the league during that time, and transformed the Knicks into title contenders.
Since Stoudemire returned to the team, the Knicks have gone 4-5. Stoudemire entered yesterday's game averaging 10.4 points and 3.4 rebounds. He is still nowhere close to the same All-Star player he was two years ago in his first year with the team, and still has yet to develop any chemistry with Anthony.
But during yesterday's loss to the Brooklyn Nets, Stoudemire and Anthony may have played their best basketball ever since they were united. The reason being was that Anthony was forced to play point guard in the second half when Pablo Prigioni injured his left ankle in the second quarter.
With Jason Kidd being more of a shooting guard than a point at this point of his career, Mike Woodson used a lineup with Iman Shumpert and JR Smith in the backcourt and had Anthony running the show.
He was able to find Stoudemire, who scored 11 of his 15 points in the second half with Anthony playing point, for some easy slam dunks.
“The first half I got into a little foul trouble so I couldn’t be as aggressive as I wanted to, ” Stoudemire said. “Carmelo was playing great basketball and found me on a couple of drop off passes. The chemistry was working well there.”
Anthony finished the game with seven assists as Stoudemire was his number one target.
“It was just basic basketball,” Anthony said. “He was open, he found an open spot, I found him, he converted.”
If the Knicks are going to have any kind of a shot of bringing a world championship back to the Garden for the first time in 40 years, the two biggest stars of the team must find a way to gel their talents together.
“I’m definitely excited about having him back and pushing his minutes up a little bit more as ths season goes on but today he was doing a great job of playing off of me when I had the ball and finding the open spot and me finding him,” Anthony said.
“So that’s gonna happen and we wanna get that a lot, especially when teams put bigger guys on myself and have somebody on him and his man has to come off of him and help when I attack and leaves him wide open, so it’s common sense basketball, give him the ball when he’s open and he’ll finish.”
Comments