UPDATE 7:30 p.m. ET: It’s now official -- Anthony will be out for Saturday night’s game against the Cavaliers, according to multiple reports.
Carmelo Anthony went down hard in the third quarter of his team’s blowout win over the Lakers on Thursday, and did not return after suffering a sprained ankle.
The injury is not believed to be serious, but Anthony is expected to miss Saturday night’s contest against the Cavaliers to give it some extra rest.
And since we’ve already seen a similar strategy from Anthony and the Knicks this season, the decision makes some sense.
From Marc Berman of the New York Post:Carmelo Anthony, nursing a sprained left ankle, is listed as questionable for tonight’s game against Cleveland but is not expected to play as he tries to rests up for Monday when Jeremy Lin returns to the Garden.
“He’ll be back out here shortly,’’ Rasheed Wallace said. “It shows what kind of team we have [winning without him]. We did it before when he went down, with the lacerated finger. It brings us together more to know somewhere in the back of our mind we can’t let him down and we can’t have a lot of people think we’re all Carmelo, all Carmelo.’’
Anthony suffered a lacerated finger that kept him from playing in his team’s win in Miami over the Heat. He may have been able to go three days later in Chicago, but gave it an extra day to make sure he’d be ready to face his former Denver Nuggets team.
He was, and he crushed them with 34 points, 11 of which he scored in the final period.
There’s no doubt Anthony has something similar in store for Jeremy Lin when he returns to MSG on Monday as a member of the Houston rockets.