By JOSH NEWMAN
Special to ZAGSBLOG
NEW YORK – Out since March 9 following a right knee debridement, Amar’e Stoudemire is hoping that a return in these playoffs isn’t that far off.
“If everything goes great, then I’m ready to play, sooner than later, hopefully if everything continues to improve, so we’ll see,” the Knicks’ $100 million power forward told reporters at Madison Square Garden before the Knicks took on the Boston Celtics in Game 2 of their first-round series. “The best thing is we have such a great team, so they’re doing extremely well in these playoffs so far. The more the team wins, than that gives me more time to get 100 percent.”
Stoudemire, who missed the first 31 games of the season following a left knee debridement late in the preseason, has yet to begin running, but said his rehabilitation is on schedule. The timetable on the left knee debridement was 6-8 weeks and Stoudemire was back playing in eight weeks.
The timetable on this procedure is the same, which means he could theoretically return for the second round of the playoffs should the Knicks advance. A potential Game 7 against the Celtics is scheduled for May 5, which is just short of eight weeks.
“I’ve been able to work a little bit on my foot work and my explosiveness,” Stoudemire said. “I haven’t quite got to full-speed running yet. Hopefully by the end of the week I’ll be there, but we’ll see.”
In 29 games this season, Stoudemire had settled in coming off the bench. He averaged 14.2 points and 5.0 rebounds while shooting 57.7 percent from the field in 23.5 minutes per game.
“I wasn’t improving, I was trying to improve by off loading it,” Stoudemire said of this latest knee injury. “It wasn’t improving so that’s why we took care of it now, so hopefully when the postseason kicked off I would be ready to play again.”
The left knee debridement in October came after an encouraging offseason in which he had worked on his low post game, notably with Hakeem Olajuwon.
