Knicks Wins Against Heat, Melo Out with Injury

Knicks Wins Against Heat Even Without Melo

Knicks and Heat meet again on the court and after a 20 point lead, Knicks win.

And if that isn't surprising enough, this one took place without Carmelo Anthony on the game.

Raymond Felton got a season-high 27 points, and the Knicks connected on 18 3-pointers to more than offset the absence of Anthony while dominating Miami for the second time this season, beating the Heat 112-92 on Thursday night.

''It was fun. It was fun the whole game,'' Felton said. ''Everybody contributed tonight. Everybody did something amazing. We played a great game minus our superstar.''

Steve Novak scored 18 points, J.R. Smith added 13 and Tyson Chandler scored 13 for the Knicks. They won their fifth straight and moved 1 1/2 games clear of Miami for the best record in the Eastern Conference. The Knicks made eight 3-pointers in the third quarter alone, the most by any NBA team in any quarter so far this season.

Anthony was out, one night after he needs his five stitches to be close due to a cut on the middle finger of his left hand.

''You've got a key guy that goes down and the other guys get an opportunity to play and step up and make plays,'' Knicks coach Mike Woodson said. ''I thought it was a total team effort from everybody across the board. I thought our defense was solid and then we kind of broke it open at the end.''

Heat coach Erik Spoelstra devoted most of his postgame remarks to the theme that Miami has to ''own'' its weaknesses right now, and how they would be addressed starting in practice on Friday.

''We'll stay connected,'' Spoelstra said. ''We're going to own this. We're not going to brush this off. And we're going to fix it.''

Posted by Andre Monohan on Saturday December 08 2012, 4:47 AM EST. Ref: Google. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under World. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0