SALON

Tuesday, Jan 15, 2013 4:15 PM UTC

Knicks in London: Light load with 1 game this week

By

Topics: From the Wires,

Knicks in London: Light load with 1 game this weekNew York Knicks guard Iman Shumpert, who had offseason surgery to correct a torn left ACL, applauds as the Knicks defeated the New Orleans Hornets in an NBA basketball game at Madison Square Garden in New York, Sunday, Jan. 13, 2013. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)(Credit: AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — The injury-plagued New York Knicks welcome a week with just one game. The only catch is they had to travel to London for it.

That’s fine with the Knicks, who were focused more on the time off than the time change before going overseas for their game against the Detroit Pistons.

The Knicks left Monday night and the game isn’t until Thursday. They return home Friday and don’t play again until Monday, getting some coveted recovery time near the midpoint of their season.

“I think the NBA did a great job with the way they scheduled it, getting us over there three days early, give us a chance to get acclimated to London, and then coming back having some days off as well,” Knicks All-Star Carmelo Anthony said. “So this is a big week for us as far as getting our bodies right and taking care of the things we’ve got to take care of.”

Anthony and Knicks center Tyson Chandler will be back on the O2 Arena floor, where they celebrated after winning a gold medal with the U.S. men’s Olympic basketball team. The memories won’t be quite as fond for guard Pablo Prigioni, last seen kicking a clock off the scorer’s table in anger after Argentina lost to Russia in the bronze-medal game.

The NBA wanted to quickly get back to London to build on the success of the Olympics, especially after having to cancel all its international plans last season following the lockout.

Though the sport lags well behind soccer and perhaps a few others in popularity in Britain, the NBA is serious about its overseas plans and the O2 is one of the world’s finest arenas.

“We understand, I think just if you’re going to pick little things that David Stern has said about the future of the NBA and the future of basketball, it’d be hard to think that the NBA at some point won’t expand overseas,” Knicks forward Steve Novak said. “Wherever that might be, I don’t know, but obviously there’s a ton of NBA fans in London, and pretty much everywhere now, so for us to go over there and play in front of people who are cheering for us that we don’t really get to see, I think is very cool for us and hopefully cool for them.”

The game sold out in just a few hours, the quickest for a basketball game at the O2, showing there’s passion for the NBA, if not necessarily in basketball. Basic rules of the sport were explained to crowds during the Olympics, and there wasn’t much boost for basketball after the poor performance by the host country.

None of that has hurt the NBA, which has five live games a week televised in Britain and is playing its fifth game in Europe this season, counting preseason.

The Toronto Raptors and Nets played the first two regular-season games in London two years ago, and Novak acknowledged it was a little “weird” to go so far to play only once. But the Knicks certainly weren’t complaining, with Anthony saying there was “no better time than right now” for the light workload.

“With our team, we could use some of these days because it’s been every other day, or you might have a day, and then you’ve got another game, so I mean we’ve been kind of going at it a little bit,” coach Mike Woodson said.

Starting point guard Raymond Felton is in the midst of an expected four-to-six week loss with a broken finger. Veterans Rasheed Wallace and Marcus Camby are battling foot injuries that have weakened the frontcourt, and 39-year-old Jason Kidd has shown the strain of playing heavier minutes in Felton’s absence.

All of them can take it easy with just game and at most two practices, and help could be on the way if guard Iman Shumpert does make his season debut after being out since tearing a knee ligament in last year’s playoffs.

Woodson said the players might have a bit of time off to enjoy the sights, but NBA activities would mostly keep them busy. The Knicks wanted to make sure they stayed sharp with the next game back home Monday against Brooklyn, their city rival who is charging up behind them in the standings.

“I’ve been there for almost a month, two and a half weeks, this past summer, so to go back, just playing one game, definitely going to bring a lot of memories,” Anthony said. “But this is still regular season for us, so that’s how we’ve got to approach it.”

More By Brian Mahoney.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations