LeBron James Glad He's Not a Part of It, New York, New York

NEW YORK -- What could have been walked into Madison Square Garden early Friday evening, said hello to a few reporters and asked if we were ready for a wild night. Oh, yes. LeBron James was eager to put on a show.

He didn't walk across a tightrope or tame any lions, but beyond that James sure did live up to his word. The circus came to town and it was some show: James had his second triple-double of the season, the Miami Heat won their 11th straight game and the sold-out crowd was reminded of a painful lesson perfected years ago by Reggie Miller. Nasty taunts invigorate James. Boos revitalize him. Hostility elevates him.

"This is a great building. Certain buildings in this league that you just thrive on and you're excited about, and this being the Mecca of basketball as a kid you always envision not only playing in the NBA but also having a chance to play in Madison Square Garden," James said after his Heat swatted the Knicks, 113-91.

So much for that silly chatter about how James is afraid of the big city's bright lights. He was said to be wary of the voracious New York media, unnerved by the fans' unrealistic demands. This, we were told, were two of the reasons he didn't take his prodigious talents to the Knicks, and the more the locals repeated the myths, the more it became clear they needed to be assured only a fool wouldn't want to play for the great city of New York.

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Greeted when he woke by a picture of his head on a chicken's body spread across the back page of the New York Post, James' night ended with him slapping hands with an orange-clad fan after nailing his final basket. And no, it wasn't Spike Lee.

"It was a fun night, seriously," James said. "The fans here are great. We all know the fans here are very passionate and they want their team to win. And if you're not on their team, then you suck. And we all know that."

In his first playing appearance in New York since snubbing the Knicks in free agency, James, predictably, was jeered very, very loudly every time he touched the ball. A sign in the crowd read, simply, "LeBron. I hate you." It made him grin. He twisted his ankle in the second quarter after his foot got caught under the Knicks' bench and he fell on his right wrist in the third quarter and he was mocked and taunted by an arena filed with longshoremen (or so it seemed from their erudite vocabulary). And still James had 32 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists. His behind-the-back pass to Erick Dampier for a dunk felt like a slap to the cheeks of tens of thousands of fans still irate that the LeBron show isn't playing here 41 times a year.

Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade, James' co-stars, each scored 26 points, making that a combined 84 points for the Big Three. There was a time when that would have been the total output for a Knicks team, but those sad, ugly nights have been replaced by an upbeat, exciting squad that has captivated a city starved for quality ball.

Knicks vs. Heat in mid-December was trumped as a perfect flashback to a time when the rivalry was as fierce as anything in sports. Friday night's game didn't reach the lunatic level that once saw coach Jeff Van Gundy clinging to Alonzo Mourning's leg and getting dragged across the court, but it definitely carried a long-lost buzz. The crowd stood and hissed as the Miami players were introduced, but the fervor was tamed as James led a 27-7 Miami spurt in the third quarter that sapped a brief NY lead.

There was a moment during that run when James looked around and soaked in the hot energy. There was Spike and Woody and Liam and Drake and Fabolous and Padma and a bunch of other beautiful people, all turned on again by the Knicks, and the Garden was rocking like it did in the late '90s. It sure seemed like a fine place to make a living. Did James regret, even for just a second, his decision?

"I seriously doubt that," Bosh said. "No offense to New York, but we've got a pretty good thing going."

Until this season, no other visiting player drew more thunderous standing ovations in NY than James. New Yorkers adored him, wanted him to love them back, and the club spent two years shredding its roster and clearing cap space to bring him aboard. He'd wear that Yankee cap and proclaim his love for the city, but then he rejected the Knicks (along with four other suitors, including Cleveland), and joined Wade and Bosh in Miami. James could have owned New York, the way Derek Jeter owns it. Turns out James is like millions of others who think NYC is a fine place to visit, but they wouldn't want to live here. That's hardly a crime, though it sure seemed like it for three hours in the joint on 33rd street.

"Not everybody wants to play in New York. You can't fault them for that. Some of us do, and that's great, that's what makes us different, but it doesn't mean we're better or worse for choosing this city," said Amar'e Stoudemire, a free agent signing that was the best move the Knicks have made in eons.

Stoudemire embraced the challenge of helping to rebuild the Knicks. He's grown quickly into the leader of this young team, transitioning superbly into the superstar role he's always craved, and chants of "MVP" chase him around the Garden floor. Bosh, the power forward who had a brief flirtation with NY brass before signing with the Heat, was greeted with chants of "Overrated" Friday whenever he came to the line -- "I loved it," he said later -- but he also outplayed Stoudemire, who picked an awful time to have an off night.

Miami aggressively double- and triple-teamed Stoudemire, forcing him to take awkward shots and make bad passes. He was held to 24 points on 11-of-28 shooting, snapping his franchise record of nine straight 30-point games, and afterward he lightened the anticipation of what had been billed as the biggest regular season Knicks game in at least a decade with a dose of realism.

"We played well. We could've played better defensively, they scored whenever they wanted so we have to get better at that," he said in front of his locker. "Playing these guys was a learning lesson for us."

Stoudemire has been a New Yorker for only a few months, but he's already mastered the shrug that ought to accompany the predictable mood swings of the city's media and fans. For a good 10 years the Knicks were mocked as the worst team to ever bounce a ball; after a sampling of 25 games they all of a sudden found themselves bunched in with the elite. Now, following an eight-game winning streak, they've lost their second straight, including the heartbreaker to the Celtics Wednesday night, when Stoudemire could have used one second more to perfect his catch-and-release.

"We haven't made our mark yet. These last two games have proven that we have lots to learn," Stoudemire said, when someone asked him how the Knicks would respond to two emotional setbacks against two very good teams.

Boston, he said, was the team everyone had to go through, but will that still be the rule come springtime? After all the obnoxious hype and the mediocre start to the season, Miami has found it's sea legs. It's not just LeBron's brilliance. It's how either he or Wade or Bosh -- or, horrors, all three of them at once -- are always on the floor, causing defenders to expend every ounce of energy and wearing them down.

As James said before the game, there's "not a spotlight that I can't handle. It's not a situation that I can't handle." He's proving that night after night after night.