Miami Heat continue dominance over New York Knicks
When Linsanity was at its height New York believed it had a winning basketball team. It mostly did. Not so now, no-one really believes that this Knicks team can match the Miami Heat. Or, indeed, win a playoff game. This was a record 13th straight postseason loss for New York.
The Heat have LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and new father Chris Bosh. The Knicks have Carmelo Anthony.
New York were winning when Jeremy Lin was playing. But he’s missing now. And so are torn ACL victim Iman Shumpert and fire extinguisher victim Amar’e Stoudemire.
Miami are cruising through this series: winning game one 100-67, game two 104-94, and now game three 87-70. The Knicks were competitive for almost three periods and then the Heat effortlessly pulled away.
As the Wall Street Journal put it, the Knicks plan is “Carmelo or Anthony?” This is a limited game plan at best. It is no-plan-at-all when Melo shoots 7-of-23 from the field. The emergency plan of JR Smith shooting lots of 3-pointers didn’t get off the ground (0-for-5).
Meanwhile, James scored 32 points, Wade 20 and Mario Chalmers 19.
The Knicks broke the post-season losses record set by Memphis from 2004-06. They haven’t won a playoff game since April 29, 2001, Game 3 of a best-of-five series against Toronto.
Anthony, through his career with the Denver Nuggets and the Knicks, has the worst playoff-winning percentage of any player who has played more than 50 postseason games in the last two decades.
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