Heat Not Sweating Knicks In Postseason
MIAMI (CBS4) - The New York Knicks have beaten the Miami Heat three of the last four times the teams have played including Tuesday night's 102-90 victory. It's given Knicks players and fans confidence they can hang with the Heat, but when the playoffs start, regular season victories mean nothing.
"Everybody has confidence against us until we take it away," Heat star Chris Bosh told the New York Knicks. "They're a good team." Bosh added of the playoffs, "They can feel like they have a chance, but I like our chances."
It's easy to see why the Heat would feel confident in a playoff matchup with the Knicks. Miami is younger, more athletic, and has more overall talent on the court at almost any time in the game than New York.
Plus, the Heat team that is hitting on all cylinders right now is not the team the Knicks beat Tuesday night or the team they saw much earlier in the season. Miami has been tuning up for the playoffs and as long as the Heat brings the defensive intensity, they may not be beatable.
Still, Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra is concerned about Carmelo Anthony's one-man scoring show.
"It's tough," Spoelstra told the Times. "He was a shotmaker tonight. We'll have to figure something out. They didn't have a lot of shots where they were posting," or isolating "and everyone else got out of the way. He was getting everything within the flow of their offense.
Let's not forget either, the last time the New York Knicks won a playoff series, President Bill Clinton was still in office. So history and the Heat's talent level are not working in the Knicks' favor as the playoffs draw near.
But, the Knicks won't draw the Heat in the first round as that job will fall to the Milwaukee Bucks or the Boston Celtics. But whoever the Heat face in the playoffs, they will give the Heat everything they can in hopes of being able to say they were the team that stopped the freight train called the Miami Heat in 2013.
