National Basketball Association

'Melo & Amar'e: Act I is a success

Published Feb. 23, 2011 12:00 a.m. ET

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Boston has its Big Three. Miami’s got LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chis Bosh. And last night, the Knicks rolled out their new superstar alignment of Amar’e Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony.

Or is it ’Melo and Amar’e?

The order, after all, is the important thing here. This is Stoudemire’s team, until further notice. He still gets top billing and still gets to be introduced last, as he was Wednesday night when the Knicks played the Bucks.

But now that Anthony is a Knick, that’s subject to change.

Because of his Brooklyn roots and connection to Syracuse, ’Melo is a bigger star in New York than Stoudemire. All you needed to do was listen to the sellout crowd in the Garden when they saw No. 7 for the first time and you could have figured that out very easily.

During pregame introductions, Anthony heard a roar.

“I never experienced anything like that before,’’ he said.

He didn’t want to be in Denver anymore. He didn’t want to be in Newark. Not in Brooklyn, either. The Garden was where he wanted to be, all along, and that was evident, even if he and Stoudemire were underwhelming in his debut.

“I’m just glad I got this game out of my system,’’ Anthony said after missing 15 of 25 shots in a 114-108 victory. “These last two days have been crazy for me. I’ve been working on no sleep.’’

Anthony’s arrival was trumpeted on the front and back pages of both New York tabloids. The headlines talked about rings, something the Knicks haven't been fitted for since 1973. That’s how much of a frenzy ’Melo has created in the Big Apple.

By comparison, when Stoudemire arrived, off the crushing “no’’ that LeBron James gave the Knicks last July, the reception for the former Sun star wasn't anything approaching this.

“This is a huge day for ’Melo,’’ said Chauncey Billups, who came East with his Nugget teammate to take over the Knicks’ playmaking duties. “I know how badly he wanted this to happen.’’

Before his first game, ’Melo tried to temper the title talk.

“Will we win the championship this year?’’ he asked. “Who knows. That takes time.’’

Along with rebounding and defense. Those are two things the Knicks don’t do at a championship level.

But with ’Melo, the goals have certainly changed for the Knicks. Before gutting their team for one of the league’s top scorers, they thought they were a playoff team. Now, they had better make the postseason, no excuses.

“We don’t have time to waste, it’s almost March,’’ said Anthony, who joined a team that is in sixth place in the East. “My conversation with Amar’e was more of, “Let’s get it going now.’’’

There’s pressure on Anthony and Stoudemire to show that they can co-exist. It’s not unlike the situation that James and Wade had in Miami earlier this season. Except that Amar’e and ’Melo are two scorers, who both have a history of needing to dominate the ball. Neither defends or rebounds particularly well.

Where others see potential problems, the two stars don’t.

"If you were GM’s or owners, you’d want me and Amar’e on the same team, as well,’’ Anthony said. “I don’t know who would turn it down. I look at other teams who have two or three guys, star players, averaging 20 or more. They get along.’’

Stoudemire echoed his new scoring mate.

“This is what we wanted,’’ he said. “We definitely wanted to build a team to compete for a title. Bringing in the pieces that we did is definitely a great step towards that.’’

Stoudemire came to New York to get his own team and to play on the game’s biggest stage. He was very comfortable in the league’s No. 1 media market, being the man and being surrounded by a bunch of players who were clearly his subordinates.

Now Stoudemire has to live with the fact that ’Melo is a household name around here. He’s big enough in New York to surpass Stoudemire, who didn’t like it much in Phoenix when he was the second star behind Steve Nash.

As for the on the court:

“I was trying to figure out where he likes the ball and where his spots are,’’ Anthony said of Stoudemire after scoring 27 points against the Bucks. “He is trying to do the same thing with me. That is the easy part. I think he and I are going to have a great time together. It’s going to be exciting.’’

Not that these kinds of pairings always go smoothly. Back in the mid ’70s, Philadelphia tried to team two prolific scorers in Julius Erving and George McGinnis. The Sixers found themselves running a “my-turn, your-turn’’ offense, with their two stars almost always on opposite sides of the floor. When one had a play called for him the other wasn’t even involved. After three seasons of falling short of a championship, they shipped McGinnis off to Denver.

The Knicks hope that their Big Two can hit it off the way that Walt “Clyde’’ Frazier and Earl “The Pearl’’ Monroe did in New York almost 40 years ago, when Monroe came up from Baltimore sporting one of the greatest one-one-one games in the NBA.

“A lot of people said it would never work,’’ Frazier recalled Wednesday. “They said we’d need two basketballs. But Earl changed his game. He played defense. He played team basketball. He gave up his scoring. He sacrificed and got what he came here for, a championship. Now, I’m hearing the same thing about Stoudemire and Anthony. They’re already saying it won’t work.’’

It worked fine Wednesday. The Knicks are 1-0 with their new star tandem.

Mitch Lawrence covers the NBA for the New York Daily News.