Cavaliers-Knicks Preview

By SANTOSH VENKATARAMAN
Posted Mar 31 2012 12:17AM

The New York Knicks and Cleveland Cavaliers are dealing with major issues at point guard after ugly performances to start their weekends.

It's unclear if the Knicks' Jeremy Lin or the Cavaliers' Kyrie Irving will be on the court Saturday night when these teams meet at Madison Square Garden.

Lin has missed the last three games for New York (26-26) with a sore left knee. The Knicks won the first two games without him before they had 18 turnovers that led to 27 points for Atlanta in a 100-90 road loss Friday.

Baron Davis continued to struggle filling in for Lin with four points on 2-of-8 shooting with four assists and four turnovers. Davis looked sluggish throughout, and coach Mike Woodson sounded like he wants to look elsewhere for better point guard play Saturday.

"I gotta start thinking about Toney Douglas playing a little bit and probably extending (Mike) Bibby a little bit more," Woodson said.

Irving, meanwhile, left Friday's 121-84 loss to Milwaukee with a sprained right shoulder. He sat out the entire fourth quarter after getting injured in the second when fighting through a screen.

"There's a lot of pain in my shoulder right now," he said. "I'm taking a lot of Advil and anti-inflammatories and just trying to get through it."

Irving, who scored a game-high 29 points and leads all rookies with 18.9 per game, said no X-rays were taken Friday and planned on joining the team on its flight to New York.

"I'm really not trying to miss any more games especially winding down the season," he said. "It all depends on how I feel in the morning."

The loss by Cleveland (17-32) helped Milwaukee move within 1 1/2 games of New York for the Eastern Conference's eighth and final playoff spot. The Knicks trail seventh-place Philadelphia by 2 1/2 games.

"We just got to go back home now and prepare for Cleveland and put ourselves back in position," Woodson said. "I think Milwaukee won tonight and Philly got beat tonight so nobody's going anywhere so we gotta just handle our business."

Carmelo Anthony scored 36 points and is averaging 29.7 in the three games Lin has missed. New York also continues to play without forward Amare Stoudemire (bulging disk).

The Knicks are 6-0 at home under Woodson, winning by an average of 21.5 points. New York last won seven straight at MSG from Jan. 26-March 2, 2007.

Cleveland has matched its longest slide of the season at six and hasn't dropped seven in a row since its NBA-record 26-game skid last season.

The Bucks' 56.8 percent shooting was the second-worst mark allowed by the Cavs this season.

"After a loss like this, I would hope the guys are real upset with how we played," coach Byron Scott said. "The only way you can do it is come back and play a lot harder. You've got to take it out on somebody. You can't take it out on your teammates. You've got to take it out on another team."

These teams have split two 2011-12 meetings, with each winning at home.

Knicks shake off Lin injury news, beat Cavs

By BRIAN MAHONEY
Posted Mar 31 2012 11:31PM

NEW YORK (AP) A playoff spot is there for the New York Knicks, if they stay healthy enough to get it.

With Jeremy Lin heading for knee surgery and joining Amare Stoudemire on the injured list, that will only happen if someone steps up to be the No. 2 scorer behind Carmelo Anthony.

JR Smith is the most obvious candidate.

"JR, I mean he has the ability," Anthony said. "Coming off that bench, we're going to need JR to be him every night."

Smith scored 20 points, Anthony had 19, and the Knicks shook off more bad injury news before beating the Cleveland Cavaliers 91-75 on Saturday night.

Already without Stoudemire, the Knicks announced before the game that Lin would have surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his left knee and could miss six weeks. That leaves them without their second- and third-leading scorers as they try to hold onto a playoff spot.

But they showed they still may have enough. Tyson Chandler had 14 points and 12 rebounds for the eighth-place Knicks, who bounced back from a loss in Atlanta on Friday to win for the ninth time in 11 games. They have won seven in a row at home and moved 2 1/2 games in front of Milwaukee, which lost to Memphis.

"Well, the good teams do that, no matter who's in or out of the lineup," Chandler said. "So that's what we've got to do. We've got to win games whether they're ugly or pretty."

This one was ugly, with both teams shooting below 40 percent. But the Knicks have been a much better defensive team since Mike Woodson replaced Mike D'Antoni, and they may have to rely on that defense more than ever now.

"We've just got to hang in there together and keep the bodies that we do have healthy, keep them alert and ready to play when we step out on the floor," Woodson said. "The season is what it is. I mean it's not going anywhere. We've got remaining games left we've just got to take it one game at a time. We still control our own destiny and they've got to understand that."

Antawn Jamison scored 13 for the Cavaliers, who played without injured rookie Kyrie Irving and have lost seven straight and 10 of their last 11 games. They committed 20 turnovers that led to 28 points.

"I thought we played hard. We didn't know until we sat down and talked to Kyrie that he wasn't going to play, and the players didn't know that, but I thought they came out and gave a heck of an effort," Cavs coach Byron Scott said. "Starting the fourth quarter, down by five, I thought we did a pretty good job, especially on the defensive end. We just turned the ball over way too many times tonight."

The victory ended a difficult week for the Knicks, who learned Monday that Stoudemire had a bulging disk in his back. They said he could be back in two to four weeks, making it possible he could play again this season.

That's unlikely for Lin, who chose to have surgery when pain in his knee wouldn't go away after a week and whose amazing breakthrough season appears over. An undrafted point guard from Harvard who was barely hanging onto an NBA job two months ago, he became the starter in February and became the biggest story in basketball.

But the Knicks will have to go on without Linsanity, and more performances like this from Smith will help. The streaky shooter is a career 12.5 points per game scorer, but hasn't had enough good streaks since joining the Knicks after playing in China, and was just 2 of 10 in Friday's loss.

But he scored 12 in the fourth quarter, grabbed nine rebounds, and was a key when the Knicks finally got some separation in the fourth quarter, hitting a 3-pointer before Baron Davis made another for an 84-74 lead with 3:35 to play.

Irving sprained his right shoulder in a 121-84 loss to Milwaukee on Friday. The Cavs waited as long as they could to see if the No. 1 pick would be able to go before ruling him out.

After trading backup Ramon Sessions to the Lakers at the trade deadline, that left them with rookie Donald Sloan as their starting point guard. With Anderson Varejao (broken right wrist) and Daniel Gibson (left foot/ankle) also out, they simply don't have enough.

Scott said team management understands that, which is why even though Dan Gilbert wrote on Twitter after Friday's loss that Cavs fans deserved better, Scott said the owner was more upbeat than he was after the game.

Smith had a 3-pointer and two jumpers in a 14-0 run late in the first quarter as the Knicks turned a 13-11 deficit into a 25-13 lead. New York was ahead by eight after the period and led 46-38 at halftime.

NOTES: The Knicks have won three in a row at home against the Cavaliers. Before then, the Cavaliers didn't lose at Madison Square Garden following a Dec. 19, 2007, defeat until last April 3. ... The teams meet again in Cleveland on April 20.

Notebook: Knicks 91, Cavaliers 75

Posted Saturday March 31, 2012 11:28PM

By Joshua Newman, for NBA.com

THE FACTS: Coming off a loss to the Atlanta Hawks on Friday night, the New York Knicks picked themselves back up on Saturday night and continued to defy logic by winning games as serious injury troubles continue to mount.

Reserve guard J.R. Smith scored 12 of his game-high 20 points in the fourth quarter while adding nine rebounds and five steals to propel the Knicks to a 91-75 victory over the shorthanded Cleveland Cavaliers in front of the 60th consecutive sellout crowd at Madison Square Garden.

Smith led three players in double figures as Carmelo Anthony scored 19 points, Tyson Chandler had 14 points and 12 rebounds and Iman Shumpert finished with 10 points.

Antawn Jamison scored 13 points for the Cavs, who were without Kyrie Irving thanks to a sprained right shoulder.

The night got off to a rough start when the Knicks announced that second-year starting point guard Jeremy Lin would be out for six weeks once he has arthroscopic surgery early next week to repair a slightly torn left meniscus. That timetable means he is finished for the regular season at the very least.

QUOTABLE: "Last night he struggled, but he bounced back big time tonight. That is how we need him to play coming off the bench. He has the ability to score points, I just need him to be active."
-- Knicks interim head coach Mike Woodson on Smith.

THE STAT: Already being asked to play heavier minutes than normal, Baron Davis turned in a fine game at point guard with the key being a gaudy assist-to-turnover ratio of 5-to-1 in 29 minutes of action. More games like that would help the Knicks' cause as Davis sported a 5.4-to-4.6 ratio for the season entering the night.

TURNING POINT: A defensive battle that the Knicks controlled throughout quickly turned into a rout just past the midway point of the fourth quarter as the Knicks closed the game on a 15-3 run. Smith scored five points in that game-closing run, including a lone 3-pointer from the left wing that gave the Knicks an 81-72 lead with 4:22 to play.

HOT: With Lin down for at least the rest of the regular season and Amar'e Stoudemire still on the shelf, it's all hands on deck in terms of offensive production. Smith did his share on Saturday night, shooting 8-for-15 from the field for his 20 points, his best scoring output since March 14 against the Blazers.

NOT: Second-year swingman Landry Fields has been mired in a scoring slump for some time now and Saturday didn't make it any better for the Stanford product. After shooting just 37.5 percent (9-for-24) over the last five games, Fields shot just 2-for-8 to finish with four points.

QUOTABLE II: "We need J.R. to play like that. For him to play like that, it gives us a boost, especially coming off the bench. Coming down the stretch, we need him to play like that."
-- Anthony on Smith

QUOTABLE III: "You feel for your teammate. No one wants to see anyone go through surgery. He had been playing so well and now to lose him to knee surgery is tough. We'll be with him and we'll hold the fort down until we get him back."
--Chandler on the loss of Lin.

INSIDE THE ARENA: Actors Michael Rappaport, Steve Schirippa and Darren Criss, as well as San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Mario Manningham watched the game courtside.

NOTABLE: It's a simple fact that when the Knicks rebound, they win games. With the 47-38 rebounding advantage they held on Saturday against the Cavs, the Knicks moved to 19-9 in games in which they out rebound their opponent and 22-14 in games where they haul in at least 40 rebounds. On topic, the Knicks are now 14-0 when they outrebound and outscore the opposition. The Knicks shot 39.5 percent from the floor against just 38.9 percent for the Cavs.

UP NEXT: For the Knicks, Tuesday @ Indiana, Thursday @ Orlando, Sunday vs. Chicago. For the Cavaliers, Tuesday vs. San Antonio, Wednesday at Milwaukee, Friday at Toronto.

• Cavaliers: Gibson, Harangody, Varejao
• Knicks: Jeffries, Stoudemire

• Cavaliers: --
• Knicks: Anthony

• Lead Changes: 3
• Times Tied: 4

• Arena: Madison Square Garden, New York, NY
• Officials: #22 Bill Spooner, #58 Josh Tiven, #65 Sean Wright
• Attendance: 19763
• Duration: 2:20