If Mardy Collins had it all to do over again, he wouldn't change a thing.

He would still have taken down Denver's J.R. Smith with a hard foul. He would still have done anything to prevent another dunk against his floundering Knicks.

The NBA slapped Collins with a six-game suspension on Monday for his role in igniting Saturday night's brawl with the Nuggets at the Garden. The melee began with his two-hand tackle of a streaking Smith late in the fourth quarter of the blowout loss.

"I don't regret fouling him as hard as I did, I just regret the whole thing escalated the way it did," Collins said at Monday morning's shootaround. "I was out there competing. I didn't want the guy to get a layup. I was trying to stop him from going in the air and that's why I fouled him that hard - so he wouldn't get hurt.

"My job is to play hard. I felt the score - we were down 20 (actually 19). I didn't want the guy to do a dunk. I could have easily made the guy go in the air and it would have been a worse foul. I just tried to keep the guy from going up."