Stoudemire Rips Knicks' 'Lack Of Urgency'
NEW YORK (WFAN/AP) -- The New York Knicks seem headed toward continuing their recent holiday tradition of being hopelessly behind by Thanksgiving.
The Rockets sent the Knicks to their fifth straight loss with a 104-96 victory on Sunday night.
Amar'e Stoudemire scored 25 points for the Knicks, who were loudly booed in the fourth quarter. After blowing a 21-point lead Friday in Minnesota, when they were on the wrong end of Kevin Love's 31-point, 31-rebound performance, they missed their first eight shots in the final period to turn this game into a rout.
"I don't understand why we're not playing with the urgency," a visibly dejected Stoudemire said. "I'm not used to that. We don't have that sense of urgency. It's almost as if it doesn't matter. That's something I'm not used to.
"I try to instill the fact that we have to play with sense of urgency. It's not like we won four games in a row, we lost four games in a row. We just still are not having the sense of urgency. We're not showing that we really want it."
New York (3-7) starts a four-game trip out West on Tuesday in Denver, in danger of quickly falling out of the race in a season that began with optimism after the signing of Stoudemire.
Reserve center Chuck Hayes, who helped slow Stoudemire after his strong start, said the Rockets could see the frustration in the Knicks.
"It happens to every team," he said. "You get frustrated. Everybody starts pointing fingers. Once you get a team like that, you have them with their backs against the wall, you want to keep them like that."
According to Stoudemire, "It's a foreign land for me right now."
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.
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