Everyone at TD Garden knew the ball was going to go to Carmelo Anthony, with the Knicks down one and just seconds on the clock.
Jared Jeffries knew it, too.
But the ball and the game ended up in his hands, and in the biggest spot of his Knick career, he didn't get it done. And he knew it, too.
"Looking at the tape, I should have shot it," Jeffries said, recalling the final seconds when he tried to pass, and had the ball taken away by Kevin Garnett.
"I felt like KG was coming down," Jeffries said. "I tried to dump the ball off to Bill (Walker), and KG had his hand down. So when I tried to pass the ball to Bill cutting to the rim, he got a hand on it."
Then again, the ball should never have been in Jeffries' hands in the first place. As Jeffries explained, the play had been designed to go to Anthony, but the Celtics took that away.
"It was supposed to go to Carmelo," Jeffries said. "But Toney (Douglas) popped out and Rondo set on top of him."
But Anthony was doubled, Walker said, and that forced the Knicks to adjust. The adjustment played perfectly into the hands of the Celtics, with Jeffries, perhaps the least adept offensive threat on the floor, winding up with the ball.
"They doubled Melo," Walker said. "He threw it to the open man, trusting his teammates. And they just made a better defensive play."
Via http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/basketball/knicks/2011/04/20/2011-04-20_i_shouldve_shot.html
