Enes Kanter was on the sidelines for the third straight game on Monday, but his veteran influence was still around from the bench. The New York Knicks trailed the Portland Trail Blazers early in the game and the injured center was still looking for ways to spark his team to a win, even if he couldn't suit up.
“I told — I’m not going to tell who — I told somebody, ‘Hey man, go out there and fight with somebody. Get the energy up.’ No, I’m serious,” Kanter said after the Knicks fell to the Trail Blazers 103-91 at Madison Square Garden, according to Greg Joyce of The New York Post. “Go out there and just hit somebody or fight with somebody, get a technical foul, I’ll pay for the fine, I don’t care. Just go out there and do your thing. We needed that energy, we needed that fight.”
“…I told two guys to just go fight.”
Enes Kanter has suffered from back spasms and hasn't been able to recover sufficiently to join the Knicks, and if he sits again, he'll hope that he's able to energize his teammates before they get into a hole, as they did through the first three quarters with the Blazers.
Yet wisdom calls for the league potentially fining him either way due to these sort of antics.
“I feel like that’s the most important thing,” Kanter said. “The crowd is dead, you’re dead, you look at the bench and everybody’s heads are down. It’s just tough. … It wasn’t there tonight.”
The Knicks take on the Miami Heat on Wednesday, hoping to snap a three-game skid through Kanter's absence.
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