A sick feeling is emanating through the New York Knicks.

The offense is struggling, their playoff hopes teetering and key players are missing practice.

That’s not how coach Mike Woodson intended to spend Sunday afternoon following an abysmal Game 3 performance that left the Knicks in a 2-1 hole and in a precarious position heading into Tuesday night’s game at Indiana. Two of his top players — guard J.R. Smith and forward Kenyon Martin — didn’t even make it to the workout because they were ill.

”We’ve got to be careful that this thing doesn’t spread and other guys start dropping so we kept them back at the hotel,” Woodson said.

There’s no telling if either player will return in time to make an impact in Game 4, which has become essential for the Knicks to keep their playoff drive alive.

Something is clearly wrong with the sickly shooting Knicks.

On Saturday, New York made just 35.2 percent from the field and its vaunted 3-point shooting vanished as they went 3 of 11 from beyond the arc. The result was a stinging 82-71 loss in which the Knicks flirted with a franchise record scoring low. The record is 67. New York didn’t top that until Martin’s dunk with 1:39 left in a game that had already been decided.

Nobody played well.

– Reported by Michael Marot of the Associated Press

J.R. Smith, who played 25 minutes in Game 3 on Saturday night despite a high fever, sat out of the Knicks’ morning practice on Sunday.

Kenyon Martin also missed practice. “Kenyon’s kind of coming down with [illness], too,” Knicks coach Mike Woodson said, “so we’ve got to be careful that this thing doesn’t spread, and other guys start dropping.”

Smith scored only nine points on 4-for-12 shooting during the Knicks’ 82-71 loss to the Indiana Pacers on Saturday. He has shot dreadfully, making just 11 of 52 shots (21.2 percent) in three games this series, and he wasn’t much better in the final two games of New York’s first-round matchup with the Boston Celtics (8-for-27, 29.6 percent).

– Reported by Jared Wade of ESPN New York

Roy Hibbert had 24 points and 12 rebounds and Paul George had 14 points, eight rebounds and eight assist to lead the Pacers past New York 82-71 Saturday night in Game of the Eastern Conference semifinals.

The Pacers are up 2-1, with Game 4 of the best-of-seven series Tuesday in Indy.

Carmelo Anthony scored 21 points to lead the Knicks, who led only once in the game for a total of 76 seconds. New York spent the final 45 minutes trying to play catch-up but never did.

Amare Stoudemire looked rusty after returning from a two-month absence, going 3 of 8 from the field and finishing with seven points. J.R. Smith scored nine points after missing the morning shootaround because of a 102-degree fever.

Indiana took control with a 14-3 run that gave it a 58-44 third-quarter lead, and the Knicks never got closer than eight.

The big questions heading into the game were whether Smith would play, whether Stoudemire would be effective and whether Indiana could get back to its brand of basketball.

Smith gave it a go, but his shooting problems continued as he went 4 of 12 from the field and walked straight to the locker room when he was replaced with 7:45 left in the game. He returned to the game a few minutes later.

Stoudemire, meanwhile, hit a buzzer-beating 3-pointer in eight minutes and grabbed two rebounds.

– Reported by Michael Marot of the Associated Press

J.R. Smith missed the Knicks morning shootaround because of a fever and may not play Saturday night at Indiana.

Coach Mike Woodson says the guard stayed at the team hotel with a fever of about 102 degrees. With the series tied 1-1, Woodson says he’ll rely on the team doctors to decide Smith’s availability.

Smith averaged 18.1 points and 5.3 rebounds during the regular season and won the NBA’s Sixth Man Award.

– Reported by the Associated Press

J.R. Smith’s teammates have a simple message for the slumping sixth man: Just keep shooting.

Smith has struggled mightily from the floor in the past four games, hitting just 26 percent of his attempts.

Coach Mike Woodson and others have expressed confidence that Smith can turn things around. “You can’t give up hope,” Woodson said Friday. “J.R.’s a big piece to what we’ve done this season. I’ve just got to help him as a coach. His teammates have got to help him. And he’s got to help himself to snap out of it. I got confidence that he will do that.”

Smith is a combined 7-for-30 in two games against the Pacers.

– Reported by Ian Begley of ESPN New York

Amare Stoudemire will likely be limited to about 10 to 15 minutes per game if he is able to return during New York’s playoff series against the Indiana Pacers.

With Stoudemire nearing a comeback from a two-month absence following right knee surgery, both he and the Knicks are keeping expectations low.

”To be honest with you, I don’t think we or he is expecting to come out and play 20 or 30 minutes and to score 15, 20, 30 points,” forward Carmelo Anthony said Thursday. ”I think he’s just trying to gradually get himself back going. He understands that, we understand that, so if he says he’s ready to go, he’s ready to go. I mean, he’s one of our guys. If he can help us, which we know he can, he can do that.”

Not for long, though.

– Reported by Brian Mahoney of the Associated Press

In his last 137 minutes played, Jason Kidd hasn’t scored. The last time he found the bottom of the net was in Game 2 against the Celtics, when he hit a 3-pointer late in the first quarter.

In Game 1 against the Pacers, Kidd went scoreless for the fifth straight game. In the past, Kidd’s points would mostly come from 3-pointers, but because the Celtics and now Pacers have used their skilled size to guard Carmelo Anthony more straight-up (less double teams), that’s eliminated some of the Knicks’ downtown looks.

But Mike Woodson isn’t concerned about Kidd’s offense.

“Jason [Kidd] is going to be there when it counts,” he said. “We haven’t played him a lot of big minutes. … We’re trying to mix and match the best we can.”

Kidd said he’s not going to change anything.

“I’m going to play the game the right away,” he said. “If a shot presents itself, I’ll take it, and if it doesn’t, I’m going to try to find one of my teammates a shot.”

– Reported by Jared Zwerling of ESPN New York

Mike Woodson isn’t changing his lineup, Carmelo Anthony will keep shooting and the Knicks say they will start redeeming tonight.

The Knicks face a genuine must-win Game 2 against the Pacers, who took Game 1 of the second-round series, 102-95, Sunday at the Garden. A loss would put them down 0-2 heading to Indiana, where the Pacers beat the Knicks both times in the regular season.

“We don’t want to do that,” Anthony said after yesterday’s practice. “We want to take care of business on our floor. We felt we gave them a game, which we did. We’ll redeem ourselves [tonight].”

History is against the Knicks, who are 0-5 in playoff series in which they drop the first game at home.

“It’s very critical,’’ Woodson said. “We can’t go back to Indiana down 0-2. We got to do everything we can do to win the game.”

– Reported by Marc Berman of the New York Post

With the Indiana Pacers owning the size advantage in this second-round series, the New York Knicks need to play bigger defensively and on the boards. That especially goes for Tyson Chandler.

But in the Knicks’ Game 1 loss on Sunday, Chandler was a no-show.

Looking ahead, no matter how many points Carmelo Anthony and J.R. Smith score, it might not matter if Chandler, the Knicks’ defensive anchor, scores only four points, pulls down only three rebounds and plays only 28 minutes because of foul trouble. That will open more doors for Roy Hibbert, David West and Tyler Hansbrough, which was the case in Game 1.

Those three combined for 42 points, and the Pacers outrebounded the Knicks 44 to 30.

In the first quarter, Chandler was effective, blocking two shots — one on West inside, and another on Paul George on a fast-break layup. And Chandler finished an alley-oop dunk from Raymond Felton.

But after that, Hibbert — one of the best defensive centers in the NBA — simply outworked Chandler. That’s how Knicks coach Mike Woodson sized up many of the individual matchups on Sunday.

– Reported by Jared Zwerling of ESPN New York

There was little Lance Stephenson couldn’t do as a high school player. Bigger and better than his peers, Stephenson flashed skills and a physicality that was beyond the competition while winning four straight PSAL city titles at Abraham Lincoln in Coney Island.

Now in the NBA, he’s no longer the dominant force he was in high school. He’s a glue guy, a fourth or fifth option with the Indiana Pacers, responsible for doing the little things like playing defense, things he wasn’t always known for as a young star. But Stephenson is still highly effective, just in different ways as he showed on Sunday against the Knicks.

Playing with his trademark scowl and aggressiveness, Stephenson, a 6-5 guard, made five of nine shots for 11 points while grabbing a game-high 13 rebounds and making a game-high three steals.

Loose and chatty before the game, Stephenson spoke easily about his homecoming where he would play before family and friends, “all of them Knicks fans,” he said. And he played like it, palming the ball a la Michael Jordan in the faces of the Knicks after grabbing a rebound.

He also frustrated J.R. Smith into 4-of-15 shooting after the two nearly came to blows in a game in February.

– Reported by Mitch Abramson of the New York Daily News

Carmelo Anthony’s shooting woes continued in Game 1 of the Knicks’ first second-round playoff game in 13 years, and it proved too much for his team to overcome.

Anthony’s poor shooting game and the size of the Pacers put the Knicks in an 0-1 hole in the Eastern Conference semifinal. Indiana beat the Knicks 102-95 Sunday afternoon at the Garden. Game 2 is Tuesday back here.

Playing with a sore left shoulder, Anthony led the Knicks with 27 points and 11 rebounds. But he shot just 10-for-28 from the field. In his last four games, Anthony is 35-for-110 (31.8 percent).

He didn’t get much help from J.R. Smith, who continues to misfire since returning from his one-game suspension in the first-round win over Boston for elbowing Jason Terry. Smith was just 4-for-15 from the field.

The Pacers were led by David West’s 20 points. Paul George added 19. D.J. Augustin scored 16 off the bench and Brooklyn’s Lance Stephenson had 11 points and 13 rebounds.

Indiana held a 44-30 edge on the boards and outscored the Knicks 20-10 in second-chance points.

– Reported by Al Iannazzone of New York Newsday

D.J. Augustin had 16 points for the Pacers, who built a 16-point lead while Carmelo Anthony was on the bench in foul trouble in the third quarter, and easily held on to spoil the Knicks’ first second-round game since 2000.

Anthony finished with 27 points and 11 rebounds, but was frustrated by the Pacers’ rugged defense and by the referees. He shot just 10 of 28 from the field.

– Reported by Brian Mahoney of the Associated Press

Mike Woodson is preparing for Amar’e Stoudemire to make his long-awaited return in Game 3 of the second round against the Pacers on Saturday in Indianapolis.

With the schedule released yesterday giving the Knicks three days off between Games 2 and 3, Woodson plans to give Stoudemire back-to-back scrimmages before Saturday’s third game.

The Knicks coach sat with Stoudemire after yesterday’s practice to tell him the plan. Stoudemire has yet to have a contact scrimmage.

“On Thursday and Friday, we’ll put a group together, we’ll scrimmage and let Amar’e get contact in,’’ Woodson said. “Based on how we feels after Thursday’s work and he’s feeling fine, we’ll have him test it again Friday. If he feels fine after Friday I think he’ll be playing Saturday.’’

– Reported by Marc Berman of the New York Post

Carmelo Anthony, who is battling a sore left shoulder, was asked yesterday yesterday if he will play in Game 1 today against the Pacers.

“I ain’t dead. I’m here,” he said. “I’ll be ready to rock at 3:30.”

Anthony said he can play and denies that his shoulder is coming out of its socket, but the injury remains troubling for the Knicks. In each of the last two games, Anthony has aggravated the shoulder — getting tangled with Kevin Garnett in Game 5 and getting bumped into by Avery Bradley in Game 6.

Coach Mike Woodson said he is a bit worried, but is confident Anthony will play.

“There is some concern there, but if Melo tells me he can play, I’m all for Melo,” Woodson said. “If it’s bothering him, we may have to rest him if that may be the case, but he hasn’t come to me.”

– Reported by Mark Hale of the New York Post

Carmelo Anthony scored 21 points and the New York Knicks held on after blowing most of a 26-point lead to beat the Boston Celtics 88-80 in Game 6 on Friday night and advance in the postseason for the first time since 2000.

Iman Shumpert scored 15 of his 17 points in the second half, when the Celtics cut a 75-49 deficit to four points. But Anthony made a jumper to give New York an 81-75 lead and then sank a 3-pointer, then J.R. Smith converted a three-point play to restore the double-digit lead the Knicks had nursed most of the game.

Jeff Green scored 21 points for the Celtics, who had rallied from a 3-0 deficit in the series and had a chance, at home, to force a decisive seventh game.

No NBA team has advanced in the playoffs after losing the first three games.

Paul Pierce scored 14 points on 4-for-18 shooting, making one of nine 3-point attempts. Anthony also struggled from in- and outside the arc, going 7 for 23 from the floor and missing his first five 3-point attempts — that was 20 in a row in the series — before sinking the key basket with 1:43 to go.

The Knicks had not won a playoff series since Patrick Ewing and Latrell Sprewell (and current backup center Marcus Camby) helped them reach the 2000 Eastern Conference finals.

Kevin Garnett had 15 points and 10 rebounds for the Celtics, who now face another offseason of talk whether to break up the aging core that won the franchise’s record 17th NBA title in 2008 and returned to the finals two years later. Reserve Jason Terry scored 14 points — the only points the Celtics got from their bench.

– Reported by the Associated Press

Carmelo Anthony believes his Game 4 shooting struggles were an isolated incident.

In the Knicks’ 97-90 overtime loss to the Celtics on Sunday, Anthony’s shot was as erratic as J.R. Smith’s behavior. The superstar forward suffered through a miserable 10-for-35 afternoon, clanging all seven of his 3-point attempts. In the final three-plus minutes of regulation and five minutes of overtime, Anthony went 1-for-9 from the field and just 2-of-4 from the free-throw line.

“I had one of those days,” he said yesterday, insisting his shot still feels perfectly fine. “I haven’t missed 25 shots in a long, long time. I don’t think I’ll have another day like that.”

Other than Sunday, Anthony hasn’t missed 25 shots in a game in his entire 10-year NBA career. Not in the regular season and not in the playoffs.

– Reported by Mark Hale of the New York Post

Jimmy Wergeles, the Knicks’ first and longtime public relations boss, MSG Network’s first p.r. director and a Marine veteran of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, died, Friday, at 90.

Wergeles began with the Knicks on day one, in 1946, and retired from the Garden in 1985. He became particularly close with Willis Reed, who yesterday called Wergeles, “My go-to man, and one of my best friends.”

– Reported by Phil Mushnick of the New York Post

It started with a 3-pointer by Avery Bradley 16 seconds into the game. It ended with a layup by Jason Terry with 6.5 seconds left.

Yes, the Boston Celtics finally got their offense going.

”It’s coming,” Terry said. ”You can feel it.”

It was there on Sunday - for much of the game, anyway - when the Celtics beat the New York Knicks 97-90 in overtime to avoid being swept in the opening round of the playoffs.

But if it’s not there on Wednesday night in New York, the Celtics will have a very tough time forcing a sixth game Friday night in Boston.

The Celtics scored fewer than 20 points in six of the first 10 quarters in the series. They managed a meager eight points in the fourth quarter of the opener - one less than Terry scored by himself in the last 1:32 of overtime on Sunday. They scored 78, 71 and 76 points in the first three games after scoring fewer than 80 just five times during the regular season.

”We’ve got a lot of basketball in us,” Terry said, ”but there’s always something like one quarter that holds us back. So if we can put together four quarters of great Celtics basketball, ball movement, getting out in transition, then this series is going to be a long one.”

– Reported by Howard Ulman of the Associated Press

While they were being blown out at home Friday, the Celtics felt the Knicks were showboating, rubbing Boston’s collective nose into the same floor they wiped with the Celtics team.

“Yeah, we did. We all did. That’s what made us so mad, so angry,” guard Avery Bradley said before the Celtics’ film session yesterday. “We just got to go out there and play the right way. We’ve got to not let that happen again. After the game, that was definitely something [discussed]. Somebody said it right after we got in the locker room: ‘Oh, they’re showboating on us, they’re dunking.’

“And everybody kind of looked like, ‘Yeah you’re right,’ ” Bradley added. “But all we can do is go out there and play the right way and play hard and don’t give them a chance to showboat.”

Easier said than done. Entering Game 4 at TD Garden today, the Celtics have been an offensive mess. They have averaged 75.0 points in the series, not once reaching 80. They’ve shot 39.5 percent and averaged 17.0 turnovers to negate the good of their defense.

– Reported by Fred Kerber of the New York Post

The New York Knicks are heading to Boston, then perhaps finally back to the second round.

The once-mighty Celtics don’t seem capable of stopping them.

Carmelo Anthony scored 34 points, Sixth Man of the Year J.R. Smith added 19, and New York opened a 2-0 lead over Boston with another dominant second half in an 87-71 victory on Tuesday night.

Raymond Felton added 16 points for the Knicks, who used a 27-4 run spanning halftime to blow it open and move halfway to their first series victory since the 2000 Eastern Conference semifinals. This is their first 2-0 lead since sweeping Toronto in the first round that year.

”For us, we know what type of team we are,” Anthony said. ”We know when we really buckle down on the defensive end, it’s been hard for teams.”

It’s been brutally difficult for Boston.

Paul Pierce scored 18 points for the Celtics, who will host Game 3 on Friday in their first home game since the Boston Marathon bombings.

They will have to be much sharper to avoid their first opening-round elimination since 2005, before they became one of the NBA’s power teams again.

”We have to figure out the offensive side of the ball and not be so stagnated,” Boston’s Kevin Garnett said. ”Figure out ways to score more often.”

Garnett had 12 points and 11 rebounds, but battled foul trouble and spent too much time walking back to the bench with a raucous Madison Square Garden crowd finally experiencing playoff success again hounding him every step of the way.

– Reported by Brian Mahoney of the Associated Press

Pablo Prigioni is back in the New York Knicks’ starting lineup for Game 2 of their playoff series against Boston after missing the opener with a sprained right ankle.

Prigioni was hurt last Wednesday in the regular-season finale, but coach Mike Woodson says Tuesday the 35-year-old NBA rookie has practiced the last few days and seems to be moving well.

– Reported by the Associated Press