GREENBURGH, N.Y. — Carmelo Anthony

The Knicks’ star then Tweeted this picture of Martin’s mother and brother, Sybrina Fulton and Jahvaris, who were in New York to do a segment with Anderson Cooper for “Anderson 360.”

“[It was] a blessing, a honor,” Anthony said after Knicks’ practice Saturday. “We all know that tragedy that happened and just to get in a different space of mind right now, bringing them to not even the game but to the locker room in the back. Meeting all the players, meeting the coaches. That was the easy part. We had no media there. It was just something that I wanted to do.

“I lost my sister last year so I know what it feels like, even with his little brother. He didn’t even want to come to the game, didn’t even know what was going on. He wanted to go see ‘The Lion King,’ but just for them to be there, that meant a lot.”

During their TV session with Cooper, Fulton said she felt some peace knowing that George Zimmerman was now in custody.

“It actually helps a little to see that the person who shot and killed Trayvon will be held accountable for what he has done,” she said.

“I’m relieved that it’s happened,” Jahvaris said. “We, finally, are starting to get some justice for my brother. So I’m happy about that.”

Asked by Cooper what he would like people to remember about his brother, Jahvaris said, “I would like them to remember that he wasn’t this violent, confrontational person that George Zimmerman is making him out to be.

“He was just a regular kid,” he said.

NEW YORK

Now the Knicks may have to add Carmelo Anthony to the injured list as well.

Anthony tweaked his groin making a spin move during the second half of the Knicks’ 89-80 win over the Milwaukee Bucks and said he will reevaluate it on Tuesday, when the Knicks are off. They host Orlando Wednesday

“If I had to play tomorrow I probably would, but we’ll see how it feels tomorrow,” said Anthony, who had game-highs of 28 points and 12 rebounds as the Knicks  moved 2 1/2 games ahead of Milwaukee for the eighth spot in the East.

Anthony missed seven games this season already with a groin injury and other assorted ailments.

Anthony said he hadn’t spoken yet to Stoudemire, who is in Florida getting a second opinion on the bulging disk in his back and hasn’t ruled our surgery. His contract is uninsured because of his history of knee problems.

“I’m trying to get in contact with Amar’e to see what it really is about,” Anthony said. “We’ll see what happens but to hear that he’s out indefinitely really hurts us as a team. He’s one of our guys, one of our leaders. He’s been coming around and it seems like he’s got his legs right, his body right. So to see him go down right now it’s just sad news for us, for me.”

In addition to Stoudemire and Lin, the Knicks are also without Jared Jeffries (knee) and Billy Walker (elbow).

Lin is listed as day-to-day with a sore knee and did not rule out missing Wednesday’s game.

But Anthony said the Knicks had to play as if both Stoudemire and Lin could be gone for a significant amount of time.

“We got 16 games left to get ready for the playoffs,” Anthony said. “We want guys healthy. If Amar’e and Lin gotta sit out the whole 16 games to get ready for the playoffs to get healthy then we’ll take that.

“Our mindset is to get in the playoffs.”

Without Stoudemire, Anthony knows he’ll have to step up. But that could be complicated by a prolonged groin injury.

“I just gotta step my game up,” Anthony said. “Now with them two guys, ain’t not telling what’s the situation with them, so it’s just time for me to step my game up in all aspects.”

Without Lin, Baron Davis started at the point and had 13 points, 7 assists and 9 turnovers.

“I was excited go get out there and continuing to play at a high level,” said Davis, who played 34 minutes. “I think I had the best game of my career since I have been here. It was good to get those type of minutes.”

He did acknowledge the need to cut down on the turnovers.

“Guys are still adjusting to each other and trying to figure out who wants the ball where,” he said.

Davis is coming off herniated disks in his back and said he couldn’t guess on how long Stoudemire might be out.

“He’s a hard worker, he takes great care of his body and we have the best medical staff in the NBA and they’re going to do everything in their power to make sure that he’s [OK],” Davis said.

Interim head coach Mike Woodson, who is now 7-1 since taking over for Mike D’Antoni, said the Knicks would have to continue to play strong defense to make up for Stoudemire’s absence.

The Knicks outscored the Bucks 42-28 in the second half, when they held Mike Dunleavy to just two of his team-best 26 points.

“You are talking about 17, 18 points and eight rebounds,” he said of Stoudemire. “Guys off the bench have to step up and make up the points. “Offensively, I am not really worried about it. If we continue to play unselfishly we will make shots. Defensively, they have to make stops and I thought they answered the bell tonight.”

With Stoudemire and Lin both out, the Knicks had better hope Anthony’s nagging groin injury does not hold him out for an extended period.

“We’ll see what happens,” Anthony said. “We just want guys to get healthy. At this point that’s the No. 1 goal.”.

**For more on the game, read the NBA.com notebook with Notes & Quotes here.

Photo: AP

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Here’s Araton with Carmelo’s take. The article also include Amar’e's thoughts upon meeting a much-heavier Cooke last year at Madison Square Garden:

It was the summer of 2001, weeks before 9/11, and Cooke returned to the popular ABCD Camp for the nation’s most prominent high school players at Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Teaneck, N.J., campus as the defending most valuable player, the presumed chosen one.

“He was coming from being the No. 1 player in the country, and we all looked at Lenny like that,” said Anthony, who was born in Brooklyn but relocated to Baltimore. “It was his size, how strong he was, how he could pass the ball and play the point, kind of like Magic, I guess. He was really explosive.”

Anthony’s team was defeated by Cooke’s group. Cooke dazzled the packed gym and set up a showdown between him and a lesser-known player who was generating interest and who was one grade behind Cooke. His name was LeBron James, out of Akron, Ohio, a comparative basketball backwater.

During the camp, a person in the James entourage noticed Shopkorn’s shadowing Cooke and wanted to know why. When Shopkorn told him, the James ally said: “You should come up to Akron and shoot LeBron. He’s the real deal.”

Shopkorn declined the offer, electing to go with the known commodity, or at least the commodity he knew.

“Lenny was local, so you had all the media outlets there, all the newspapers, all the scouts and coaches,” Shopkorn said. “There was this buildup to the game, and it kind of took on a life of its own.”

Sitting in the stands with Debbie Bortner that day, Joakim Noah says he remembers Cooke’s climactic moment — crossing over James on the dribble several times before draining a midrange jumper. The gym erupted, but it was only the first half of a game that would go down to the last possession, a much leaner James with the ball and his team trailing by 2.

James had already outscored Cooke, 21-9, but he saved his best for last. Guarded by Cooke, he dribbled out of the backcourt, to his right. Just as he approached the 3-point line, with a step on Cooke, James went airborne, kicked his feet back and floated the ball toward the rim. He hit nothing but net — game over — while Cooke’s jaw dropped.

“How’d he make that?” he said to a friend afterward, mixing in profanity. “Oh my God.”

Sonny Vaccaro, the former sneaker company executive who founded the camp, was stunned to learn that Shopkorn had footage of what he considered to be a historic shot. He called it the “one physical moment that symbolized the beginning of LeBron and the downfall of Lenny Cooke.”

“He beat Lenny on his own turf,” Vaccaro said. “I mean, you can say it was one shot, one game, but in a way, Lenny never recovered.”

Photo: Casey Templeton / New York Times

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NEW YORK — Carmelo Anthony

“Yeah, I’m suiting [up] on Wednesday,” Anthony said after scoring 33 points in the Knicks 102-93 loss to the Orlando Magic, New York’s third in a row.

Anthony initially sprained the ankle in last Thursday’s loss to Memphis, and then re-injured it while stepping on Hedo Turkoglu’s foot. He said he received ice and stimulation treatment after the game.

“I think I stepped on Turkoglu’s foot towards the end of the game,” Anthony said. “At this point, I just continue to get the treatment that I need.”

That’s not all that’s bothering Melo.

His sprained left wrist is also not 100 percent and makes it difficult for him to shoot.

“Even though I had two hands on the ball, I was really shooting with one,” said Anthony, who went went 9-for-27 from the field, 1-for-8 from beyond the arc. “I couldn’t really control the ball.”

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GREENBURGH, N.Y. — Carmelo Anthony

“Obviously, from watching them play they are not distracted,” Anthony, who practiced for the first time since hyper-extending his left knee Monday, said Wednesday after Knicks practice. “It seems like they have no distractions. Hopefully, they can keep it that way.”

On Tuesday, two Fine accusers, Bobby Davis and Mike Lang, initiated a lawsuit against Syracuse and head coach Jim Boeheim after Boeheim initially dismissed them as “liars” who were seeking money.

Boeheim later retracted his comments and apologized.

“I went up there to the game they played Florida, talked to them, tried to send some positive energy toward their way and it seems like they’re all on board, all on track,” Anthony said of a trip that happened before the lawsuit was launched.

Anthony also texted congratulations to senior point guard Scoop Jardine after Syracuse became No. 1 on Monday, following losses by then-No. 1 Kentucky and No. 2

Anthony led Syracuse to the NCAA title in 2003 and admits he’s openly rooting for them to win another national championship in this scandal-plagued year.

“I think they can win it all,” Anthony said. “I’m biased, you might not agree with that. They have the talent, they have the team.”

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NEW YORK

Last year the Carmelo Anthony Sweepstakes dominated the New York headlines until he ultimately landed with the Knicks at the trade deadline.

Now it’s Chris Paul’s turn.

The New Orleans Hornets point guard becomes a free agent next summer, and until then he will continue to answer questions about whether he wants to join Melo and Amar’e Stoudemire in the Big Apple.

Click here to read the full story at SheridanHoops.com.

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GREENBURGH, N.Y.

The Nets swept the Knicks in four games that year, and the Celtics are on the brink of breaking out the brooms again this year.

New York is in an 0-3 hole entering Game 4 Sunday at Madison Square Garden, but Carmelo Anthony would like to push the series to a Game 5 Tuesday in Boston.

“The most important thing is just how much pride we got,” Anthony said Saturday after practice. “I don’t want to get swept. We don’t want to get swept so we gotta go out there and leave it all out there on the court, see what happens.

“Every play, every hustle play, if we gotta foul somebody, if we gotta knock somebody out, we just gotta do whatever we gotta do to prevent a sweep.”

The Knicks will likely be without Chauncey Billups for the third straight game because of the injury to his left knee, though president Donnie Walsh sounds like he would like to bring Billups back next season. The team holds a $14 million option on the 34-year-old guard.

Amar’e Stoudemire said he felt “a little bit worse” a day after managing just seven points on 2-of-8 shooting in Game 3, and indicated he wouldn’t play if his stiff, sore back doesn’t improve after treatment Saturday and Sunday.

“The back is extremely painful right now, but it’s tough to say I just can’t go,” he said Saturday. “It’s the postseason. We have a lot at stake here. We’re trying to get a win tomorrow. But if I can’t go I’m pretty sure my teammates will continue to play hard hopefully and try to get a win.”

Stoudemire didn’t quite concede the series, but he came close.

“It will be great to win a game but due to the situation right now, a couple guys are injured, it’s going to be tough,” he said.

After announcing last summer that “The Knicks are back,” Stoudemire now sounds as if he realizes his first season with the team is coming to a rapid close.

He sounds like he’s looking forward to next season and beyond.

“That’s what you have to build on is the winning mentality, knowing that the franchise is now a winning franchise and we’re looking to build,” he said.

Knicks president Donnie Walsh echoed those sentiments.

“I think we’ve got try to do the best we can [Sunday] and go after the game and see if we can bring it back to Boston,” Walsh said. “But our future’s gonna be pretty good. And that’s the only thing I can say right now. And I’m not using that as an excuse or anything else.

“I think it was good for us to get in the playoffs. We see what we need to have and what we don’t have, and we have to get work to make sure we have it.’

Still, there is the matter of Game 4, and Anthony understands he may have to drop 40 or 50 points in order for his team to have a chance.

After pouring in 42 points and grabbing 17 boards in Game 2, he managed just 15 points on 4 of 16 shooting in Game 3′s 113-96 loss, a performance that inspired boos from the fans.

“I’m not thinking about the boos, man,” he said. “It doesn’t affect me, it doesn’t affect us.”

Instead of playing alongside Stoudemire and Billups, Anthony now finds himself teaming up with second-unit players like Toney Douglas, Bill Walker, Roger Mason and Jared Jeffries.

“I mean, it’s about us, man,” he said. “I would love to sit and say it’s about me, I can do it by myself.

“But it’s about us. We gotta go out there and fight. We gotta leave it out there on the court [Sunday].”

Anthony has been swept before with the Nuggets — and he didn’t like it.

“It’s a sad feeling,” he said. “And I definitely don’t want to experience that anymore.”

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GREENBURGH, N.Y.

But if Amar’e Stoudemire and Chauncey Billups can’t go, he’s ready to play the entire night in what he’s calling a “must-win.”

“I’ll play 48 [minutes] if I have to,” he said Thursday after practice. “It’s playoffs now. You know, you gotta leave it all out there on the court. If they can’t go, then maybe I’ll go to sleep a little bit earlier tonight, get some rest.”

Without Billups and Stoudemire in the second half of Game 2′s 96-93 loss, Anthony played all 24 minutes Tuesday night. He tied his playoff career-high with 42 points, adding 17 rebounds and six assists.

He wrapped both knees in ice packs after the game, but said the mental toll was greater than the physical one.

“I think it was just more of a mental exhaustion, just knowing how hard we played and how close we were in both of those games,” Anthony said. “For us to not win any of those games, I think mentally it just took a lot out of me.”

Still, in the immediate aftermath of Game 2′s loss, Anthony described it as “fun,” which drew the ire of critics who said Kobe Bryant never would utter such words.

“I’m not Kobe,” he said. “I ain’t Kobe, man. I still had fun in those games. We’re on the road. Nobody would ever say the Knicks would have a chance to win both games in Boston, so I’ll take that. We could’ve won both of those games. We’d could’ve been up 2-0 right now and you probably wouldn’t be asking me that question.”

Anthony defended his decision to pass to Jared Jeffries out of the double-team in the waning seconds of Game 2, just as he defended his choice of shooting the 3-pointer at the end of Game 1. Neither play worked out for the Knicks.

“[Jeffries] had to make that decision,” Anthony said of Jeffries’ decision to try to pass to Bill Walker instead of shooting. “I can’t make that decision for him. Once I gave him the ball, it was up to him. He could take the shot or pass it. He chose to pass it.

“If I’m in that same situation, I would definitely pass it to Jared again. Today I told him, ‘Get a couple layups under the basket.’ I kept throwing it to him, throwing it to him, saying ‘Dunk the ball next time.’ It was all laughter, it was all fun and games. He understands what’s going on.”

Billups played plenty of playoff games with Anthony in Denver, but said Game 2′s performance might have been his best postseason effort ever.

“That would probably be the best with it being playoffs and on the road and against a really good defensive team, man, that was impressive,” Billups said. “That was impressive. I mean, he made every play to try to win the game. Even the play he made at the end, pass the ball to Jared, was the right play to make.

“That was impressive.

After playing two games in Beantown, Anthony is excited about the Knicks’ first home playoff game since 2004 and said he expects a “crazy” atmosphere.

Despite being down 2-0 to the defending Eastern Conference champs, Anthony is not worried about a sweep.

“We’re definitely not thinking about that,” he said. “It’s one game at a time, and Game 3 [Friday] here on our court, it’s a must-win. Must-win for us.

“This is the hardest game, by far, that we’ve played this season.”

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