Knicks think they make grade without test

When he signed with the Knicks in July, Amar'e Stoudemire spoke openly about recruiting other stars to join him in New York. But as he looks to extend his streak of 30-point games to a franchise-record eight this afternoon against the Nuggets at the Garden, Stoudemire doesn't sound as if he will be making any sales pitches to Carmelo Anthony before the game. "The team we have is what we have to go to battle with every night," Stoudemire told Newsday. "We can't think about nothing else than what we have and approach it that way every single night."

The Knicks are conjuring a lot of history almost on a nightly basis with this run of seven straight wins and 12 in the last 13 - their 15-9 record is their best start since 1999-2000 - but has all of this raised the bar of expectations for the season?

After the Nuggets, the Knicks will test themselves against two of the elite teams in the Eastern Conference this week when they host the Celtics on Wednesday and the Heat on Friday. The belief is that the Knicks still need one more star, such as Anthony, to move into that upper echelon of legitimate contenders.

"I think we're a really good team now. We are," Stoudemire insisted. "We'll get a chance to measure ourselves up against some great teams in the next week, but I definitely think we're a pretty good team now. Being better defensively will make us an even better team. But I think we're pretty good."

Stoudemire said the success he and the Knicks have enjoyed while feasting on a relatively soft schedule is right where he expected the team to be at this point.

"I pictured us being this good; honestly I did," he said. "So did the coaching staff. We talked about it before the season started, how good we could be. It was just a matter of us understanding the system and guys buying into it and also getting better defensively.