Blowout to Celtics an ‘embarrassment’

AP/GETTY SO MUCH for ball movement. So much for moving closer to first place. So much for that two-game winning streak.

And so much for Mike Woodson escaping the proverbial hot seat.

James Dolan could not have been pleased watching Woodson’s team go through the motions from his baseline seat, as the orange-clad Knicks sleepwalked from a noon start until the ugly finish on Sunday. They spotted Boston leads of 12-0 and 18-1 en route to their worst and most befuddling loss of the season, a 114-73 annihilation by the Celtics to boos after more boos at the Garden.

“What Boston came here and did was an embarrassment. To lose like that on our home court, I think everybody should be pissed off,” Carmelo Anthony said, adding there was “no comparison” between the Knicks’ effort level and performance Sunday with blowout wins late last week against Brooklyn and Orlando. “It’s night and day. … Right now, it’s no need for me to try to pinpoint what happened, what went wrong out there. (It was) a good old-fashioned ass-whipping to me.”

In a game reminiscent of another brutal Sunday matinee loss to San Antonio four weeks earlier, the lethargic Knicks (5-14) looked nothing like the team that finally appeared to be figuring out how to come out of its early-season doldrums in their previous two wins.

They reverted back to the offensively stagnant and defensively passive squad that had dropped nine consecutive games until taking apart the Nets on Thursday and the Magic one night later.

“I wish I could explain it. I didn’t see this coming in terms of how we played,” said Woodson, who declined to say what he told the team after the game. “I’ll keep that to myself. I’m not happy about how we played. Nobody in that locker room, our fans, nobody should be happy about watching something like this tonight.”

You clearly can count Dolan among the dissatisfied, as Woodson and Anthony both labeled the game “a step backwards.” And the embattled coach typically took the blame for how his team played. “I thought we had turned the corner somewhat. I never take anything for granted. I’ve been at this too long to even think that way. It just goes to show you if you don’t come out ready to play — and a lot of that’s on me as a coach,” Woodson said. “I can’t have guys stepping on the floor doing what they did today.”

Anthony and other Knicks defended Woodson and put the onus on themselves for the noshow performance.

“That’s an unfair statement for him to say this loss is on him. It’s not on him. It’s on the players,” said Amar’e Stoudemire, a rare silver lining with a season-high 17 points. “We had a solid game plan we just have to go out and execute. We’re all in this thing together. We lost together, so we’ve got to figure out how to win together.”

In a dismal performance that certainly could not have helped Anthony’s potential recruitment of sidelined Boston star Rajon Rondo, the Knicks did cut a 28-point deficit early in the second quarter to 17. But a 20-2 surge by the Celtics bridging halftime sealed the laugher and perhaps reestablished the Knicks to the laughingstock status Anthony had tagged them with last week.

“We’ve got to wash this one off in the showers,” J.R. Smith said.

“I don’t want to try to pinpoint it, what happened, whether it was a 12 o’clock game or whatever it was. I don’t think we (were) ready today and it showed,” said Anthony, who scored 19 points on 5-for-15 shooting in three quarters. “I know Coach, I know what type of guy he is, so he’s always going to put it on him, but you can’t teach effort. “We’re the guys that are going out there as a team and not giving him the effort and not giving ourselves the effort, not giving ourselves a chance to win the basketball game. So as much as he wants to put it on himself, it’s no need for that.”

Jordan Crawford (23 points) and Jared Sullinger (21) paced the Celtics (1012), who led by as many as 45 to extend their lead over the Knicks in the weak Atlantic Division to 3½ games.

“The message is ‘figure it out.’ We gotta figure it out. I think it wasn’t really nothing to be said over something like that. It was selfexplanatory,” Anthony said. “For me, my message to us is we gotta stay together. We win games, we lose games, we’re gonna stick together, we’re gonna get through this together.”