Heat blow past Knicks 100-67

The New York Knicks not only lost the game tonight, but they lost G Iman Shumpert. Shumpert injured his left knee while doing a crossover and went down in tons of pain. During the fourth quarter the Knicks said that Shumpert was taken to a local hospital for an MRI. This is a major loss for the Knicks who will really miss Shumpert and his extraordinary defense. The Knicks will likely now have Landry Fields start in his place for game 2.

The Knicks had no type of spark on the offensive end and that in itself led to them losing this game. Carmelo Anthony was shut down on the offensive end and really never was able to hit shots consistently to help the team win. Anthony scored 11 points tonight and five of those points came from the free throw line. One thing that Anthony did well was play hard. He tried his best tonight, but the Heat were clearly the better team. JR Smith contributed 17 points, but made some costly errors in this game that took away from a nice effort from him.

LeBron James dominated the Knicks tonight as he scored a game high 32 points. James played with intensity and was able to get to the line 14 times for 11 points. As the playoffs go on, it will be very important for James to keep his effort up. His teammate Dwyane wade scored 19 points tonight and he was very effective tonight. He played really hard and was able to make some very tough shots. The Heat have two incredible leaders and tonight they showed up on both ends of the floor. The defense from the Heat really knocked off any momentum the Knicks had coming into this game. They were able to draw fouls and really made the game tough on the Knicks. They were able to harass the Knicks and forced them to get angry at the referees which caused the Knicks to lose focus.

The Knicks will have to regroup and move on from this game. They will need to study tons of film on how to incorporate Anthony and Stoudemire more effectively. Tonight they were unable to get their two stars rolling and that was a major issue in this game. There is still plenty of series left, but the Knicks lost tons of momentum today. Game 2 will take place on Monday at 7:00 PM on TNT.