Amar'e gets 41, but Knicks fall to Suns

On his way out of the Garden Monday, Amar'e Stoudemire politely signed autographs for some teenagers who politely had asked. One of them said, "Thanks for bringing the energy back to the Knicks." This is the typical response fans have offered this season for a team that is better than most had expected.

The problem, as Mike D'Antoni and his players pointed out after a second straight home defeat against a sub-.500 team, is that the Knicks are not as good as they think they are. "We're not Boston, we're not Miami," D'Antoni said after a 129-121 loss to the Suns.

True, Stoudemire had a season-high 41 points, Wilson Chandler added 23 and Danilo Gallinari (17 points) looked good for a guy in his first game back from a sprained knee during the annual Martin Luther King Day matinee. And there is no shame in having seen Steve Nash (15 points, 11 assists, eight rebounds) take a game in his Hall of Fame-bound hands, as he did with seven assists in the third quarter.

But the fact is, the Knicks were coming off a shoddy loss to the weak Kings, and D'Antoni admitted yesterday morning, "We probably took the game too lightly." They didn't come out with much more zest against the Suns, notwithstanding the 121 points. "You don't have a mental lapse on offense," D'Antoni said.

What they did was take a mental vacation on defense, allowing Nash, Vince Carter (29 points, 12 rebounds), Grant Hill (25 points) and Channing Frye (18) to find a rhythm. It looked as though the home side had gotten swept up by its own popularity.

"You come back home, you're in the comforts of Madison Square Garden, you think, 'Oh, we're really good, we're this, we're that.' We're not," D'Antoni said of a team that fell behind 39-30 after a quarter and was outscored 23-15 in the final 4:45.

"We're a team that played hard to get where we got, and now we're playing soft to get back to where we maybe should be," he said. "We have to understand where we are and who we are."

To be precise, they are 22-18 entering a tough trip to Houston, San Antonio and Oklahoma City. "We have to understand," Stoudemire said, "we haven't done anything yet as far as winning. I know we've won a few games and everybody's excited, but we have a lot of room to improve.''

The irony is that, although they generally didn't have enough passion, Stoudemire might cost them by playing with too much. After fouling Frye on a dunk attempt, he intentionally bumped him with his shoulder and was assessed his 12th technical foul. Four more and he gets suspended for a game.

"I don't know what to do. That's my game. I've been playing like that my whole career. I play like that in practice against my own teammates," he said. "I'm just going to have to play with a zipper on my lips."

D'Antoni basically said that's the least of the Knicks' problems. The greater problem is handling their own success, if you want to call it success.

"Twenty-two and eighteen," Chandler said, "is not a lot, especially with a lot of good teams in the East this year."