"OK, so he faced Jermaine, not Shaquille O'Neal in his first NBA start Wednesday and didn't blow the roof off the building with his performance. And it was just a preseason game in which Amar'e Stoudemire stole the show in his first Garden appearance as a Knick. So Timofey Mozgov's Garden debut in the Knicks' 104-101 loss to the Celtics didn't exactly conjure up memories of Willis Reed or Patrick Ewing, as he delivered five points and three boards in 15½ minutes. Instead, it merely represented one small step for a very big (7 foot 1) man, while Stoudemire scored 30, but sat out a fourth quarter in which Paul Pierce (one of three Boston starters on the floor at the time) drained a 23-footer with eight seconds left to break a 101-all tie. "We'll see them again," Stoudemire said, minus malice, of the Celtics playing starters and rotation players to the buzzer against Knicks reserves. Saturday, in fact, in Hartford, Conn. - when Mozgov could face Shaq, who sat out a second straight night with a hip injury. And knew nothing about the Russian rookie when asked about him before the game. "What's his name?" Shaq said. "I don't know who he is." The officials did, though, as Mozgov got T'd during a four-technical second quarter (two that earned Kevin Garnett an early exit) that demonstrated that even speaking Russian can run afoul of the NBA's new "don't ask, don't talk" policy." http://www.northjersey.com/sports/p...rookie_stands_his_ground_in_Knick_defeat.html
