Posted by Sabrina B. @gametimegirl

The Knicks knew how badly the Nets wanted to beat them, and for a half New York wasn’t doing anything about it.  A little more effort, and a lot of Carmelo Anthony sent New Jersey home disappointed.

Anthony scored 39 points for the second straight game, including the tiebreaking jumper with 1:08 left, and the Knicks rallied from a 16-point deficit for a 120-116 victory on Wednesday night.

Chauncey Billups added 33 points, six rebounds and six assists, andAmare Stoudemire scored 23 points for the Knicks, who have won two in a row after a six-game losing streak and trimmed their magic number for clinching a playoff spot to three. They also climbed within two games of Philadelphia for sixth place in the Eastern Conference.

After surrendering 68 points in the first half to a team that was blown out a night earlier, the Knicks came into the locker room and decided their effort, as Billups said, was “unacceptable.”

“This was a big game for us. We’ve got a lot to lose, they don’t. They just looked like they wanted it more than we did and we talked about that,” Billups said. “We came out immediately in the second half and just kind of turned the tide, momentum kind of went our way.”

Anthony scored only two points in the fourth quarter after a 20-point third, but it was the basket the Knicks needed in the first meeting since they beat out the Nets in the race to acquire the All-Star forward.

Deron Williams had 22 points, eight rebounds and eight assists in his return from a six-game absence with an injured wrist, but was short on a potential tying jumper in the final seconds and appeared hurt again after going down trying to chase down his miss.

“I thought he was off a little bit, but man, he made some big plays for us,” Nets coach Avery Johnson said. “Big shots, timely 3s, good assists. But you could see there at the end, maybe he just ran out of gas a little bit.”

WRITTEN BY by STATS LLC and The Associated Press & FULL STORY HERE