This was the best of Carmelo Anthony and the best of the whole season for the Knicks with what felt like the whole season on the line, the best of the Knicks at both ends of the court, from the end of the third quarter all the way into the middle of the fourth.

This was the moment when they rose up and the Garden rose up and this became a great, loud playoff night out of the past. This was the night when the Knicks were losing to the Pacers and maybe about to lose their season, and then went off on a 30-2 run that tried to make the place as loud as Larry Johnson did with a 4-point play against the Pacers once.

It was 64-62 for the Pacers with 3:28 left in the third quarter when George Hill made a three-pointer for Indiana. And everybody at the Garden knew in the quiet of that moment what would happen if the Pacers could win the rest of Game 2; knew that the Pacers would go home with a 2-0 lead; that the Knicks weren’t coming back from that.
Then the Knicks began to play the kind of defense that got the Garden to chanting about defense a thousand years ago. Then Carmelo Anthony began a 10-minute stretch when he was as great a Knick as he has been since he hit town, was that kind of player with a sore left shoulder, playing this way when the night seemed to be going against him and his team.

- Mike Lupica