SAN ANTONIO — The Knicks didn’t solve a thing on the Carmelo Anthony Crisis front Wednesday night.
Anthony got his shots, but no one knows whether he’ll ever really embrace this offense. The Knicks took another loss. Jeremy Lin continued his meteoric tumble back to Earth.
Lin called it “tough times” after the Knicks took a 118-105 pasting from one of the best teams in the NBA. The Spurs are no dummies. They saw Tyson Chandler was sitting out and went down the lane as if they were seeing a plush red carpet.
But nobody should be surprised that the Knicks allowed 60 points in the paint. Chandler means as much to the Knicks as he did to the Mavs last season.
The bigger issue continues to be how Carmelo Anthony is used at the offensive end, if he can get his shots in a system where Lin isn’t going to force-feed him the ball and whether Anthony has confidence in Mike D’Antoni to adjust his offense to his talents.
It doesn’t mean that we’re going back to Melo dominating the ball and killing the offense. But there has to be an effort to get him the ball where he can do what he does best.
“That’s probably the question — how much?” D’Antoni said before the Knicks lost for the sixth time in their last nine games. “How much do you do it and you try to find a blend. You try to find a balance. And that’s what we’re working on.”
They need to work fast. But it’s not going to come overnight or even next week or the week after. Lin, in case you didn’t already hear, is running a team for the first time. There are nights, such as Wednesday night, when it appears his 15 minutes of fame are expiring.
Missing in action in Dallas a night earlier, Anthony returned to get his looks and take his rightful place atop the Knicks’ shot-distribution chart. After taking 24 shots — nine more than Lin and 12 more than Amar’e Stoudemire — Anthony said he’s confident D’Antoni’s offense will get him the ball where he needs it. When you get that many attempts off, what are you going to say, no?
“It’s going to happen,” he said after leading the Knicks with 27 points. “I’m not worried about that. I believe in Coach. He’s smart and he has knowledge of the game. I believe in him.”
Anthony didn’t make any big shots in this game because the Knicks were blown out by halftime. So you really couldn’t draw any conclusions. The only thing we know for sure is that they will play in Milwaukee Friday, and the focus will again be on Anthony, D’Antoni’s offense and all of that good stuff.
“It should be easy for him,” D’Antoni said. “We have to find that sweet spot where he’s going to be our leading scorer, there’s no doubt about it. He should take more shots than anybody, there’s no doubt about it. We have to find that sweet spot and get everybody ‘unfrustrated’ and get ’em on the same page and work through it.”
The only time the two didn’t appear to be on the same page was when D’Antoni said they had gone over some things to help Anthony’s game in a film session. When asked about that, Anthony acted as if it never happened. Kind of like when D’Antoni was asked several weeks back about Anthony suggesting that Lin should be given a crack at the play-making position and D’Antoni saying he didn’t remember.
Right back at ya, coach.
At least Anthony was in a better place with his game against Tim Duncan and Co. than up in Dallas, where he looked totally lost.
“More determined,” was how D’Antoni put it. “He needs to be aggressive.”
It looked as if Anthony decided to take the night off in Dallas, for whatever reason. But there were a lot of other times when he didn’t get the ball. In fact, NBA scouts have noticed that the Knicks have been running fewer plays than at any other time this season for Anthony and Stoudemire. That’s incredible, but it’s also the way it is in the D’Antoni system.
D’Antoni was still preaching ball movement after the loss to the Spurs. That might have been thrown out there for Anthony to read about. Then there was also this reminder from the coach:
“If you have selfishness, you have trouble.”
There’s only one Knick that was directed at, the one who got off 24 shots.
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