Melo passes Bird on NBA scoring list, leads Knicks past Jazz in OT
After both teams went to double-overtime on Monday, the last thing the New York Knicks and Utah Jazz wanted Wednesday was to go more than 48 minutes. But with neither team able to slam the door in four quarters, it came down to which team had enough in the tank for an extra-session closing kick. In a turn of events that will surely stop seeming surprising at some point, it was the Knicks, led by more strong all-around play from Carmelo Anthony, who supplanted an all-time great in the record books in the process.
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Anthony scored a game-high 30 points to lead the Knicks to a 118-111 overtime win over the wounded Jazz at Madison Square Garden. That total moved him past Larry Bird into sole possession of 31st place on the NBA’s all-time scoring list, giving him 21,793 for his career, two more than Bird tallied in his Hall of Fame run.
“Well, first of all, it’s an honor just to be on that list, you know, and to know the great work that Larry Bird put in throughout his career,” Anthony told MSG’s Rebecca Haarlow after the game. “I’m still going, man. I’m still having fun with this game of basketball.”
Anthony, his teammates and Knicks fans weren’t having very much fun early on, as New York struggled to navigate Utah’s frequent screens and keep tabs on Jazz wings Gordon Hayward and Rodney Hood. After taking control with a 13-0 second quarter run fueled by Hood and ice-cold Knicks shooting, Utah kept New York at bay through the start of the fourth, which saw the Knicks’ second unit cut their deficit to four before Derek Fisher reinserted Anthony, Kristaps Porzingis and Arron Afflalo.
With Anthony alternating strong takes to the basket with the more unselfish play that’s earned him widespread praise of late, drawing defensive attention before rifling passes to his teammates for open shots — including 3-pointers by Porzingis, Afflalo and Langston Galloway in the final four minutes of regulation — the Knicks clung to a 99-96 lead following a pair of Porzingis free throws with 9.9 seconds remaining.
All the Knicks needed to do was foul before the Jazz could get up a 3-point shot, send Utah to the line for a pair, and ensure they’d get the ball back with a lead. But sometimes, even if you’re a rookie with the fourth-highest-selling jersey in the league, you’re still a rookie.
After initially acquitting himself pretty well in a switch against Gordon Hayward, the 7-foot-3 Porzingis got caught in the air and fouled the Jazz star in the act of taking a 3-point shot with just two seconds remaining. Hayward made all three, tying the game; moreover, Porzingis picked up his sixth personal, relegating him to the bench the rest of the way.
With a chance to win it, Anthony went hell-bent for glory:
… only to throw a wild running hook off the side of the backboard after the Jazz smartly blew up the play. You don’t get any points for that, I’m afraid, so the game headed to overtime at 99-all.
Come OT, though, New York looked fresher and stronger than the shorthanded Jazz, who continue to work without injured contributors Derrick Favors and Alec Burks (and who’ve been without top defensive guard Dante Exum all season long), and who just couldn’t string together stops and makes.
After the two sides traded buckets to start OT, Anthony once again leveraged the defensive attention he drew in the post, firing a cross-court pass over the top of four Jazz defenders with their heads turned to a wide-open Derrick Williams in the right corner, who drilled a 3 that gave the Knicks a 106-103 lead with 2:25 remaining:
Just over a minute later, Williams — the former No. 2 overall draft pick who had yet to carve out a role in four pro seasons before joining New York in free agency — again made his presence felt with the sort of athletic hustle play that makes fans fall in love:
After a missed 3-pointer by Afflalo, Williams outworked Hood and Jazz point guard Trey Burke on the glass, tipping the ball to himself four times before corralling it, avoiding Hood’s attempt at a block, and getting both a layup and the and-one to put New York up 111-105 with 1:01 left. The hard-work play earned not just cheers, but chants of Williams’ full name from the stands at the World’s Most Famous Arena.
Utah never got closer than two possessions again, as New York made five of its final six free throws to complete the comeback and seal a victory that gets the Knicks back to .500 on the season at 22-22.
Anthony was once again sensational, making 13 of his 20 shots to go with a season-high-tying nine assists, seven rebounds and just two turnovers in 42 minutes:
Twenty-two of Anthony’s 30 came after halftime, and the Knicks needed every last one of them — and every last one of the 17 points he created by direct assist after intermission — to make sprint past Utah late.
“We committed ourselves on the defensive end,” Anthony told Haarlow. “We found some energy, we found some momentum and we just stuck with it. We chipped away at the lead. We didn’t try to get it back in one play, and everybody came up with some big plays tonight […] Offensively, we buckled down. Defensively, we got stops when we needed to. We made shots when we needed to, and we won the game.”
All that first-person plural was well-earned on Wednesday. Robin Lopez continued his excellent January, scoring a season-high 22 points on 11-for-14 shooting with 12 rebounds, six of which came on the offensive glass, while adding three blocked shots and helping hold Utah center Rudy Gobert to a relatively quiet 11 points, eight rebounds and two blocks. Porzingis added 14 points, five rebounds, three blocks and two steals before fouling out. Williams (18 points, six rebounds in 28 minutes) and Galloway (nine points, three assists, two rebounds and a steal) provided needed punch off the bench.
Those extra contributions were enough to edge out big nights from Hood (29 points, six rebounds, five assists) and Hayward (27 points, five assists, three rebounds, two steals).
“I thought tonight we controlled and outplayed them the entire game and then in the last six minutes we kind of fell apart,” Hayward said after a second straight overtime loss that dropped Utah to 18-24, in 10th place in the West, according to The Associated Press. “We’re a young team. We need to learn from these and take positives from it, but it’s definitely frustrating.”
The win pushes the Knicks to within a half-game of the Boston Celtics for the No. 8 seed in the East, and just two games back of the Indiana Pacers for the No. 5 spot. It also made Melo a winner on the night he passed Larry Legend. Next up: Gary Payton (21,813 points), Clyde Drexler (22,195) … and, if the Knicks can keep this up, maybe a chance to return to the kind of meaningful late-season play for the 31-year-old Anthony and his teammates.
“I’ve got a long way to go,” Anthony told Haarlow. “I feel like the team is helping me, I’m helping them, and I feel like we’ve got something good going for us.”
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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