His Voshon Lenard shot is on point

To realize just how big tonight’s home opener is against the Heat, all you have to do is check out the press seating assignment chart. You could field a week’s worth of respected journalists on Around the Horn without ever having to call up Woody Paige with the names littered throughout the Garden tonight.

But even if you didn’t make it into the press room, there were a couple of other pre-game sights that make this feel like more than an ordinary regular season game: Spike Lee and Dwyane Wade were standing on the end of the baseline having a lively discussion as D-Wade sunk the H-O-R-S-E shot from over the backboard over and over again.

Super agent Arn Tellem was walking in the tunnel, which is ridiculous given that his only guy playing here tonight is Danilo Gallinari. It’s not like Jermaine O’Neal’s Raps were playing in Canada tonight.

In the Miami locker room, the young guys were trying to stay loose, but were definitely nervous about taking the court. We were expecting Mike Beasley to be bouncing around, clowning on everyone, but he was barely talking above a whisper when being swarmed by media. Everyone else on the Heat was pretty much silent with their eyes glued to a replay of the Knicks/Celtics preseason game. That is, except for Shawn Marion, who is rocking a crazy mohawk that has like six lines shaved in the back of his head.

Both Beasley and Mario Chalmers found out that they’d be starting, and made a point to mention the fans in the “mecca of basketball.” (Their words, not ours.)

“I hope the fans like me,” said Beasley laughing.

There was no sign of Eddy Curry in the Knicks locker room or on the court before the game. As a matter of fact, he’s nowhere to be found right now. Their clubhouse emptied pretty quickly, as Quentin Richardson’s custome “Q23″ Jordan’s and Mardy Collins‘ “MC #25″ Reebok Talkin’ Krazy’s were basically in the middle of the room.

Zach and Gallinari are going back and forth at the three-point line taking fadeaway three’s in each others’ grills. And while everyone else wearing blue and orange stands around the three point line and bombs during warm-ups, we can’t find Eddy. And he’d be hard to miss.

The opening cermony is supposed to be crazy, we’ll hit you with pictures when it gets going…