The Knicks' offense finally appeared to gel on Saturday against the Kings despite the absence of Amar'e Stoudemire who sat with a sprained ankle.

After the game, Mike D'Antoni didn't deny that the offense may have flowed more naturally without Stoudemire.

“Could be,” D’Antoni said. “But that doesn’t matter in the sense that we’ll get over that and we’ll all move the ball (when both Amar’e and Carmelo play). It’s something that is a natural kind of thing and if we want to be a good team we have to understand that.”

“(Saturday) we made shots,” Carmelo Anthony said. “Everybody made shots. Josh (Harrellson) made shots and if that was Amar’e, he probably would have done the same thing. It really doesn’t matter. When Amar’e was out there at the time we didn’t make shots and it cost us some games.”

The Knicks are only legitimate contenders if they can figure out how to maximize the play of both Stoudemire and Anthony.

Tyson Chandler believes the Knicks could replicate some of the scoring success used by the Mavericks around Dirk Nowitzki.

“Even though we went to (Nowitzki) a lot he got it in the flow of the offense,” Chandler said. “In this situation we have two guys that can carry the load at the end of the game,” Chandler added. “The thing we have to concentrate on is getting them the ball in the flow of the offense. The first couple of games we just concentrated so hard on feeding them it was unfair because they’re looking at three defenders.”