Portland Trail Blazers overcome 45-point Carmelo Anthony effort to down New York Knicks 105-100: NBA Recap
Portland Trail Blazers ruined Amare Stoudemire's season debut with a 105-100 win over the New York Knicks here at Madison Square Garden Tuesday night.
LaMarcus Aldridge posted a double-double with 19 points and 14 rebounds, Nicolas Batum collected 26 points while Damian Lillard had 21 points and 6 assists for the winning cause.
Carmelo Anthony had missed his last two games with a hyper extended left knee. He returned tonight and started off from where he had left off; giving a stellar 45 point performance on a 14 of 24 shooting from the field. J.R. Smith
had a double-double with 28 points and 11 rebounds for the night.
Whenever Knicks find baskets hard to come by, they increase their shooting from distance. However tonight, their star sharp shooter Jason Kidd was off-colour as he finished off with a season low 0 points in his 32:57 minutes on
the court. The Knicks shot 27 percent from behind the arc, compared to 33.3 percent shooting by the Blazers.
Knicks also struggled to penetrate the perimeter, they were outscored 48-36 in the paint and were outrebounded 47-37 by Portland.
Amar’e Stoudemire received a standing ovation from the home crowd when he came off the bench to join the action on the court. But, playing for the first time since his knee surgery, the power forward showed signs of rustiness and
contributed only 6 points with 2 turnovers in his limited minutes.
The visitors meant business right from the word go and raced to a 12-4 advantage early in the first period. Anthony was red hot; he scored 13 of the Knicks first 16 points to reduce the deficit down to 16-19 at the 6 minute mark.
Blazers went for a 7 nil spurt later in the period, and were leading 30-23 at the end of the quarter.
Portland carried on in the second period with the same intensity and energy and pushed their lead to 58-42 later in the quarter before the Knicks cut the gap down by 5 at halftime, 47-58.
A quick succession of deuces early in the third quarter cut the deficit down to 53-60 for the Knicks and another brace few minutes later made it a 3 point game on 59-62. But Portland kept their upper hand and maintained a reasonable
distance for the rest of the period.
New York never led in the game. They started slashing the Blazers advantage later in the fourth quarter and Anthony nailed a three pointer to make it a three point game on 97-100. But rookie Lillard stepped up for the team as he
connected one from downtown to seal the win for the Blazers.
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