GREENBURGH, N.Y. — On the eve of the Boston Celtics’ visit to Madison Square Garden, Knicks president Donnie Walsh agrees with Paul Pierce on one point: there is no rivalry just yet.
“It’s a rivalry?” Pierce told reporters in Boston. “Man, y’all are letting me in on all the new stuff, all the talk. I didn’t know we had a rivalry going.”
Since Pierce, Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett joined the Celtics before the 2007-8 season, Boston is 11-2 against the Knicks.
Boston has won 10 straight overall coming into Wednesday’s ESPN game at Madison Square Garden.
Riding the red-hot tandem of Amar’e Stoudemire and Raymond Felton, the Knicks have won eight in a row and 13 of 14.
Yet Walsh agrees there is no real rivalry yet.
“To get where Boston is is going to take time,” Walsh said after practice Wednesday.
Asked if it could take years for the Knicks (16-9) to really challenge the Celts (19-4), Walsh said, “It did for me in Indiana, yeah.”
Walsh said he’s still evaluating how far the current roster can take the team and brushed off an ESPN.com report that Carmelo Anthony would only sign an extension if he were traded to the Knicks.
“I know nothing about that. It’s all coming from ESPN so you guys know more than I do,” Walsh said.
Walsh said he’s still in the process of figuring out if the current team needs any additions.
“We’re not far enough along in the season to know that,” he said. “That’s what we’re spending the whole year analyzing, is where does this put us? It’s a tough week and you’ve got a lot of teams out there that are playing very, very well and that have been together for five, six years. Boston’s a good example. We spent the summer and assimilated a good team, but now you’ve got to play together and get to know each other. And that takes time.”
Short of landing Anthony, Walsh could choose to add a guard like O.J. Mayo or another big to provide depth to the bench before the Feb. 24 trading deadline.
As things stand, head coach Mike D’Antoni relies heavily on his starters as he seeks the franchise’s first postseason berth since 2004 and seems to only trust Ronny Turiaf, Toney Douglas and Shawne Williams off the bench.
“I would love to cut some minutes off our guys,” D’Antoni said. “They’re playing a little bit too many minutes now. But we’ve got to win also, so it’s a little bit of a balancing act trying to find ways that I can take minutes off of them.”
D’Antoni joked that the only way to curb the starters’ minutes was for the team to win a few more blowouts.
“If they would just start winning by 20 points, then I could give them the fourth quarter off, but that’s on them,” he cracked.
With Boston coming and then the Miami Heat in Friday, don’t expect any Knick blowouts during the s0-called “Dream Week.”
