Amar'e: Melo would be "a great situation for us"

 The venerable Neil Best (I've always wanted to change my byline to Alan Bester, just to top Neil, but apparently, one already existed) filed this story about Amar'e Stoudemire while the new Knicks power forward was in Queens on Wednesday to shoot a commercial -- with former Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy, coincidentally -- for ESPN's NBA coverage.

Amar'e told Best he has "no idea" what's going to happen with Carmelo Anthony, and added, "Me and Carmelo are great friends but I'm still not sure where he's going to end up going. If he were here in New York that would be great, a great situation for us, a great opportunity for us."

Amar'e and Carmelo shared a suite at Yankee Stadium last week for the Jay-Z/Eminem concert. On Thursday night, Amar'e was back at the Stadium, but instead of being with a potential teammate, he was with his actual teammates in what he called on Twitter "a big boy suite."  He took the mound  to throw out the first pitch before the Yankees-Rays game and also got a picture taken with Donald Trump.

By the way, the Yanks, who had seemed to be on a roll going into Thursday night, were bombed by the Rays and Cy Young favorite C.C. Sabathia (who happens to be a close friend of one LeBron James and predicted James would sign with the Knicks) had an uncharacteristically poor outing.