Carmelo Anthony wins it for Knicks in overtime

NEW YORK – Carmelo Anthony had tried this once already, isolating near the left elbow against Michael Kidd-Gilchrist as the clock wound down in regulation. And that shot had spun out of the rim, putting any celebration on hold and sending the game to overtime.

But as the clock ticked down in overtime, the score tied again, Anthony wouldn’t change a thing. He isolated on the same spot, milked the clock – this time the shot clock – to its final ticks. And he turned and softly lofted a shot over Kidd-Gilchrist again. This one slipped cleanly through the net with just three seconds to play and delivered the Knicks their third straight win, this one a 113-111 thriller over the Charlotte Hornets.

“Well, honestly, I wanted that shot,” Anthony said. “I wanted that moment, to be honest with you. I felt like I had an opportunity to close it in regulation and in overtime I did want that situation.”

“We know he is going to get a good shot,” Knicks coach Jeff Hornacek said. “You can run all the plays you want, but 'Melo has the experience, the size to hold guys off. His turnaround jumper is – you guys saw it. He makes big shots. It’s a luxury to have. He wants to make plays.”

Anthony is rarely lacking in confidence and he wasn’t this time either, even after that first shot rimmed out. “Well, it was in,” he said. “Whether I thought it was in or not, it was in and it came out. The second one felt good. Once I kind of made my move and saw the basket, the release felt good.”

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Anthony had already carried the Knicks almost single-handedly back into the game on the offensive end, finishing the game with a season-high 35 points. But he did just about everything on this night. He grabbed 14 rebounds, handed out five assists and blocked a shot.

Rather than the usual cries of, “M-V-P” after every basket, the fans were imploring the Knicks with chants of, “De-Fense,” which mostly seemed to fall on deaf ears. But Anthony blocked a shot, Kristaps Porzingis blocked two, and finally, when the Hornets had one last chance with Kemba Walker lining up a three-pointer in the corner, Derrick Rose leaped and got a piece of it.

“I wanted to jam him,” Rose said. “He’s a great shooter, a great player. If I would have let him get that shot off, it probably was going to go in. But I just used my height and my length against him. Try to make it hard for him. The team goes how he goes and my job was just to make it hard.”

The same goes for Anthony and the Knicks on most nights, but more and more this season he has found that he doesn’t have to do every night on the offensive end for the Knicks to have a chance. This time he did, but he still managed to take advantage every time the Hornets tried to double team him.

Late in regulation Anthony found Will Hernangomez rolling to the hoop twice in a row, delivering a pair of perfectly placed passes through traffic to layups.

And after carrying the load on his shoulders for much of the night help finally arrived in the final minutes. Porzingis, who had just five points through the first 42 minutes, came up with 11 late points. Anthony whipped a pass to Porzingis with 45 seconds left in overtime to find him open for a corner three-pointer.

Joakim Noah was back in the starting lineup Friday night, shaking off the effects of the flu-like symptoms that had sidelined him for the last two games. But maybe he hadn’t shaken them off completely.

Less than three minutes into the game he drove to the rim to throw down a resounding dunk – except he didn’t quite make it, rattling the ball off the rim. The Madison Square Garden crowd groaned, the awkward missed dunk just seeming to accentuate what the fans who had spent the last two games cheering his replacements believed, that the Knicks were better off without him.

But if Noah didn’t make the highlight reels with his offensive efforts, he did what it is that he does best – crashing the boards, setting hard picks and mostly screaming in celebration at everything the Knicks did right and imploring them when they went wrong.

And he did eventually prove that, yes, he can dunk. With 1:11 left in the second quarter he drove again, this time dunking it and hanging on the rim as he rocked back and forth. But he still played just 18 minutes – and not at all in overtime.

“Felt pretty good,” Noah said. “I feel like it’s solid, coming off of being sick like that, just coming out and playing, it felt good.”

BRIEFS: Marvin Williams suffered a hyperextended knee in the third quarter and did not return for Charlotte. … Rose did attend Anthony’s Thanksgiving Day dinner, spending the day with his new teammate as well as another old Chicago native – Dwyane Wade. “It went great, had a great time, chilled, food was great,” Rose said. He pointed out that he was only joking Tuesday when he said he was bringing just his appetite, adding, “I brought like 5 or 6 bottles of wine. That was about it. More for his wife than anything or anybody. I look out for the women, man. That’s my job. … They had everything you could think of. He’s doing it right. 'Melo’s doing it right.” Rose actually said he was going to hire the caterer as his personal chef for his time in New York.

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