Who would have thought the Knicks would snap their six game losing streak in a game that leading scorer Carmelo Anthony had just one point? On Tuesday night in Charlotte against the lowly Bobcats, not only did the Knicks get a victory with Anthony’s low output, they won the game by 33 points.
All season the Knicks (7-10) have needed much more out of their secondary players (while also needing more consistency and better shooting out of Anthony, it must be noted) and they got in on Tuesday night with efficient performances from Tyson Chandler (20 points, 17 rebounds), Amare Stoudemire (18 and 8) and Landry Fields (18 pts., 5 assists and a +29).
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It was the kind of blowout win the team needed after their head coach called their recent slide "a crisis". It surely helped that their opponent was the Bobcats, who fell to 3-15 on the season. On Wednesday there’s a chance the good vibes continue as the Knicks visit another young and struggling team in the Cleveland Cavaliers. The 6-10 Cavs have lost four straight games, but played the Miami Heat very close in their last contest on Monday, a 92-85 loss in which they turned the ball over 22 times. Rookie point guard Kyrie Irving leads the team in scoring (17.4 PPG) and assists (4.8 APG), but the young floor general has struggled with ball security recently. He has a team-high 18 turnovers in the team’s last four games.
Thanks in large part to the tail end of the LeBron James era in Cleveland, the Knicks are winless in their last eight games at Quicken Loans Arena, with their last win coming in Nov. of 2006. Their best chance to snap that slide will be if their role and bench players repeat their performances from a night ago. That’s how the Knicks will turn around their season altogether. There aren’t many nights Carmelo Anthony will score in single digits, so if the likes of Fields, Stoudemire, Chandler and the bench start contributing more, New York will simply win a lot more games.