The Knicks battled back from a 10-point fourth quarter deficit in Denver on Friday, and had a chance to send the game into overtime in the final possession of regulation.
Carmelo Anthony waived off the screen and went to an isolation set against Randy Foye, and given the fact that Anthony had a good four-inch height advantage over his defender, backing him down and then turning for the fadeaway didn’t seem like a terrible idea.
But Foye rose to the occasion quite literally, getting a piece of Anthony’s shot and the result was a 97-95 win for the Nuggets that sent New York to its eighth straight loss.
From Marc Berman of the New York Post:“I didn’t get it done,’’ Anthony said in a rare moment of taking full blame for a loss. “That’s it. My teammates did a great job of getting us in that position, giving me a chance to tie a game or go for the win. I didn’t pull through tonight. I’ll take that one.’’ ...
“Once I looked and saw I had a smaller guy on me, my thing was just to shoot over him. I know what I wanted to do and the spot I wanted to get to. It just didn’t happen. I didn’t complete the mission today.’’
The Knicks are 3-12 on the season, and in the West that might be too big of a hole to overcome in terms of being able to string together enough wins to earn a spot in the playoffs.
But the East is so dreadful that despite the horrific start, New York finds itself just three games out of first place in the Atlantic Division, currently led by a Raptors team that owns a record of 6-9.
