Stoudemire expected to miss first three pre-season games.
New York Knicks star Carmelo Anthony has revealed it is “just sad” seeing Amar’e Stoudemire suffer setbacks in his recovery from injury.
While the 28-year-old has previously revealed that one of the reasons he moved to New York was in order to play alongside Stoudemire, he has admitted that it is difficult to see his team-mate struggle with on-going knee problems.
Stoudemire is expected to miss the first three pre-season games at least as he continues to work his way back from a knee procedure in the summer, his third in the past 12 months.
The 11-year veteran missed a significant part of the season last year, playing in just 29 regular season games and Anthony admits that they could have done with him at certain points as he adds a different dimension to the team.
Nevertheless, his primary hope is that Stoudemire can return to full fitness and reach the same kind of level of performance that he was used to producing prior to the knee complaints.
“As a friend, it’s hard for me to sit back and act like it doesn’t bother me because I know how hard of a worker he is [and] I know the time that he puts in the gym to train and rehab,” Anthony said according to ESPN.
“To see him go forward and then take some steps back every time, it’s just sad.”
Statistics suggest that when both Anthony and Stoudemire are on the floor together, the Knicks in actual fact suffer as their regular season record is 45-44, while in the post-season it’s 2-11.
Critics have insisted that the duo can’t function on the same team at the same time as they like to attack the same areas on the court, but there was an effort from Stoudemire to change his game last season as he had good production off the bench on limited minutes.
However, Anthony isn’t paying much attention to that talk and he is hopeful that his team-mate can just maintain full fitness and not suffer any further setbacks.
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