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"The eight minutes Carmelo Anthony spent idling on the bench in the third quarter on Sunday felt as long as the eight months he had waited for another shot at the Boston Celtics.
In actual time, it was probably closer to 25 minutes that Anthony was forced to sit down with four fouls and watch his teammates blow a big lead.
Without him, the Knicks looked lost at both ends of the court. But with the season opener slipping away to a team that was without its leading scorer, the Knicks turned to their best player to save Christmas.
Anthony scored 17 of his game-high 37 points in the fourth quarter as the Knicks rallied from a 10-point deficit in the last 11 minutes to defeat the Boston Celtics, 106-104, at the newly renovated Garden.
Anthony was nearly perfect in the final 12 minutes as he made four of five shots, including both 3-point attempts, seven of eight free throws and an important block to prevent a certain dunk from Jermaine O'Neal.
"I'm like you guys," Mike D'Antoni said. "That's unbelievable what he does."
The Celtics played without injured small forward Paul Pierce and his absence was exploited as Pierce's replacements, Sasha Pavlovic and Marquis Daniels, were outscored by Anthony 37-4.
Anthony managed to take advantage against his inferior defenders as Pavlovic and Daniels were whistled for four and five fouls, respectively. Daniels was assigned to Anthony for the entire fourth quarter, a decision that proved disastrous for Boston.
"I made a game-plan mistake," said head coach Doc Rivers. "We didn't go get the ball out of Carmelo's hands and I thought we probably should have."
Anthony, one of the league's premier scorers, has a quick trigger that can sometimes neutralize double teams. When Boston finally sent two defenders at him, Anthony knocked down a 19-footer with both Daniels and Kevin Garnett closing in."
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