Miami Heat and LeBron James outclassed NY Knicks in Game 1, and even a Jeremy ... - New York Daily News

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The Knicks (l. to r.) Landry Fields, Jeremy Lin, Jared Jeffries and Amar'e Stoudemire take the practice court. Lin is not yet back from a knee surgery, but it's hard to imagine he could help the Knicks beat the Heat in round 1 of the NBA playoffs.

MIAMI â€" A day after they scored 67 points and were outclassed in every way imaginable by the Miami Heat in their playoff opener, the Knicks allowed Jeremy Lin to speak to the media.

Whether it was really the best time for Lin to tell the world what is going on with his surgically repaired left knee or merely a diversionary tactic to move the spotlight away from the Game 1 debacle, that is really the secondary issue here.

The primary issue is Lin’s status and whether he’ll try to play in this series.

Check that. The primary issue is why he would even want to play in this series.

In February, the Heat made Lin look like he didn’t belong in the NBA. What makes anyone think Miami won’t embarrass him just as badly now?

“They’re long and they’re athletic and they take your first option away and they’re all over the floor,’’ Lin said Sunday.

Meanwhile, Lin has more than five weeks of rust to shed, has never experienced playoff basketball and has played in just 35 regular-season games. It wasn’t all Linsanity, by the way.

Of course he wants to play and have another crack at a Heat defense that made it close to impossible to so much as dribble the ball up the floor, back in February.

Heat players were all over the floor and all over Lin that night, when he missed 10 of 11 shots and committed eight turnovers in a 14-point Knick loss on national TV.

“The playoff atmosphere is just unbelievable,’’ Lin said. “I want to be able to help my team and play.’’

But Lin needs to think long and hard about coming back for this series before he takes the plunge. It has all the makings of a baptism by inferno and he doesn’t need that on his resume, not when he will be a restricted free agent this summer.

True, the Knicks are desperate to find a playmaker who can put the ball in Carmelo Anthony’s hands. Just as they’re desperate for Tyson Chandler to recover from the flu and provide the last line of defense he gave them in the regular season.

In the opener, the Heat simply wouldn’t allow Anthony to receive the ball in his favorite spots. In that respect, the Heat did to him exactly what it did to Lin back in February, on the same American Airlines Arena court.

But at this stage, even without Iman Shumpert, and with Mike Woodson down to Baron Davis, J.R. Smith, Mike Bibby and Toney Douglas, not exactly a who’s who of star playmakers, the wise move for Lin is to take his time coming back.

The Heat isn’t the team you want to make your playoff debut against. In fact, the Heat might be the very last team, and it all starts with James, who should be part of the Defensive Player of the Year discussion as much as Chandler or anyone else.

“He never takes a play off,’’ Davis said. “That’s why he is having an MVP-type year. He dominates games and he dominated Game 1.’’

He did and the Heat did.

“They’re battle-tested,’’ Woodson said.

The Knicks are experiencing the playoffs for the first time with this core group. Lin would be part of it, if not for injuring his knee back in late March. He’s been mostly off limits since his surgery. Then Sunday, on a miserable rainy day in Miami, the Knicks decided that it was time to make him available. He reported that he took “a step back’’ Sunday when his knee didn’t react well to his extensive pregame workout on Saturday.

He hasn’t taken contact yet, and he’s run only a couple of times. He’s nowhere near game shape and when he tries to cut, he thinks about the knee. To return, he still needs to prove to himself that he can take a hit and cut at full speed, without thinking about whether he’s going to reinjure the knee.

So he’s not thinking about playing Monday or Thursday when the series shifts to the Garden.

“I’ll see how I feel at the end of the week,’’ he said. “But I don’t want to make a promise.’’

So for now Lin will watch from the bench and learn and see if any Knick can get the ball to Anthony. We’d say that he might be able to do at least that if he were available. But this is the Heat we’re talking about. When LeBron & Co. are all over the floor, they make guys like Jeremy Lin disappear.