NEW YORK – Vince Carter scored 29 points, including the 20,000th of his career, and the Phoenix Suns ran past the New York Knicks 129-121 on Monday to match a season high with their third straight victory.

Grant Hill added 25 points for Phoenix, which overcame a season-high 41 points from former Suns All-Star Amare Stoudemire and handed the Knicks their third loss in a row. Steve Nash finished with 15 points and 11 assists in a good start to a five-game Eastern trip for the Suns.

The Suns also held Stoudemire scoreless for the first eight minutes of the final period after he had 33 points through three, giving them just enough defense in a matchup that not surprisingly was otherwise all about offense.

Wilson Chandler scored 23 points for the Knicks. Raymond Felton had 13 assists but another poor shooting night, going 3 for 13 for seven points.

Former Knicks forward Channing Frye scored 18 points. It was the Suns’ third consecutive high-scoring performance after a four-game stretch in which they were held below 100, the first time that had happened since December 2005.

One of those came 10 days ago during a 121-96 loss in Stoudemire’s return to Phoenix. But the Suns got revenge against him and former coach Mike D’Antoni and have scored at least 115 points in every game during their winning streak.

Danilo Gallinari scored 17 points in his return to the lineup after missing six games with a sprained left knee, but the Knicks were without big man Ronny Turiaf because of a bruised right hip.

Stoudemire left Phoenix for New York in the summer when the Suns wouldn’t fully guarantee him a maximum contract over concerns about the long-term condition of his knees. He scored at least 20 points for the 25th consecutive game and moved ahead of Bernard King for the third-longest streak in franchise history, four shy of Richie Guerin’s record set in 1962.

He also picked up his 12th technical after he bumped Frye in the first half and is now four away from an automatic one-game suspension.

The game was close throughout the second half. Hakim Warrick, essentially Stoudemire’s replacement, scored six straight for Phoenix before Gallinari’s 3-pointer tied it at 106 with 5:29 left.

Nash answered with a 3, Carter scored five straight for Phoenix, and Frye capped a 13-4 surge with another 3-pointer that gave the Suns a 119-110 lead with 2:39 remaining. The Suns stayed ahead with their excellent foul shooting, finishing 28 of 31.

Carter became the eighth active player to reach 20,000 and has been in double figures in all 10 games since he was acquired from Orlando. He also added 12 rebounds.

Notes: Knicks president Donnie Walsh believes he could acquire at least one first-round pick if needed. The Knicks have long been considered to be running behind the Nets in the Carmelo Anthony chase, in part because they have no pick to include in a trade with Denver. “I could probably get more than one, but I’m not going to say how many,” Walsh said before the game. “But I’m confident I can get a first-round pick.” … Suns coach Alvin Gentry was impressed with New York Jets coach Rex Ryan last week and imitated Ryan’s news conference in which he said the matchup with the Patriots came down to himself against New England coach Bill Belichick. “It’s personal, it’s me and Mike, OK,” Gentry joked of the matchup with Mike D’Antoni, his former boss. “It just comes down to me and Mike, that’s it. It doesn’t have anything to do with the players, anything. It’s me and Mike. I’ve got to be a better coach than Mike today, OK?” … Speaking of football, wide receivers Larry Fitzgerald and Terrell Owens were sitting in the same row across from the Phoenix bench.

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Phoenix Suns update:

Suns (17-21) at Knickerbockers (22-17) … 11 a.m. Phoenix tip time

C: Robin Lopez … Ronny Turiaf

PF: Channing Frye … Amar’e Stoudemire

SF: Grant Hill … Wilson Chandler

SG: Vince Carter … Landry Fields

PG: Steve Nash … Raymond Felton

Key Knicks subs: Shawne Williams, Bill Walker, Toney Douglas.

Key Knicks injuries: Danilo Gallinari (knee sprain) and Kelenna Azubuike (kneee surgery) are out.

Ten days ago, the Suns were a mess incapable of even threatening to win at home against the Knicks. They trailed all game, gave up 19 first-half points to Amar’e Stoudemire, saw New York make 17 3-pointers and allowed Raymond Felton’s first career triple-double. The result was a 121-96 loss, an embarrassing blowout defeat that led to another one at Denver.

But since that game, the Suns have gone 3-1 and the Knicks have gone 1-3. And don’t expect Alvin Gentry to play lineup chess again with Mike D’Antoni. He said he will stick with the above starting lineup, which is 3-1, that he has committed to for the long-term whether D’Antoni goes small with Toney Douglas again or not. Gentry said he regretted that night’s last-minute lineup change to start Josh Childress at center and Grant Hill at power forward.

“We weren’t playing good basketball,” Hill said. “To come across a team like New York and the situation with Amar’e and Coach D’Antoni and them playing extremely well having just beaten San Antonio at home, they were playing with a lot of confidence and we weren’t. We’re playing with more confidence. We have more spirit now. Hopefully, we have a little bit more fight in us.”

Hill could draw some Stoudemire defensive duty again, either at the start or later in the game, as a change of pace. His knee was sore on Saturday after returning to play Friday night but improved enough to play in some of Saturday’s scrimmaging at a practice in Manhattan.

“I’m like the fire extinguisher,” Hill said of covering Stoudemire. “I’m there. Break, if necessary.

“I’m a third-down back.”

As for the 17 3s the Knicks made, they went cold two nights later at Los Angeles when the longer Lakers were running at those shots. Gentry said the Suns challenged 13 of the 17 3-pointers that New York made in Phoenix. And of the three wide-open ones the Knicks took, they missed two.

“They did break us down on dribble penetration,” Gentry said. “Our defensive scheme was to make them make jump shots by being attached to Amar’e and they did that so we’ll have to revisit that.”

More than anything, Gentry wants his team to play offensively like its identity again. He has seen Steve Nash turn more aggressive offensively in the past two games and welcomes it. Nash has been taking one less shot per game than this season over last season with Stoudemire around.

“I’m happy about that,” Gentry said. “I would hope he would get up five, six extra shots a game. We need that. One thing about him, I think he’s got a pretty good feel for when we really need him to score. We have to be a little more simplistic offensively to make things easier for ourselves. When we swing the ball and there’s a shot available, we need to eliminate the pump fake and shoot the ball. We’ve never been a team that passes up shots. That, in itself, creates a good flow for us.”

The Suns have been in New York since Saturday, arriving a day early because of today’s 1 p.m. New York tip so they could get adjusted, practice here Sunday and get the Big Apple revelry out of the way two nights before the game. Much of the team went out to dinner together Saturday night, Gentry said.

“I was very much worried about the New York factor, which is why we’re here now,” Gentry said after Sunday’s practice. “Hopefully, the New York factor happened (Saturday) night.”

With a win today, the Suns would match their season-best winning streak and have only losing teams remaining on the rest of this five-game trip.

Tweetin’ at www.twitter.com/paulcoro

 

Phoenix fans got a rare chance to see Suns basketball again Friday night.

Photos from the game | Box score

It took Amar’e Stoudemire, Mike D’Antoni and the New York Knicks to play at US Airways Center to remind the Valley what it used to feel like before these Suns became the franchise’s worst team in seven years.

Stoudemire received cheers and the Suns received boos from the crowd as New York routed Phoenix 121-96 in Stoudemire’s first game as a visitor at the arena he grew up in for eight years.

The reminiscing came in watching Stoudemire score 19 of his 23 points in the first half, just as the Suns’ decision to start Grant Hill on him was a reminder of how Steve Nash said Thursday that the Suns don’t have a power forward.

“I had one objective and that was to dominate from the start,” Stoudemire said. “That was my main goal, to dominate from the get-go. I got it going early.”

The flashbacks continued with both teams using the same D’Antoni playbook but the execution and passion came only from the Knicks (21-14).

“There have been worse teams in worse situations so we’re not going to give up and we just understand that we can’t allow teams like this to get off to great start,” Phoenix’s Channing Frye said. “We just got to take something away.”

If you missed overwhelming 3-point shooting, New York offered that too to give the Suns their 11th loss in the past 14 games. The Knicks made 15 of 28 3-pointers in the first three quarters, which were the only ones that mattered. The Knicks had the Suns’ lifeless effort buried 84-60 with three minutes still remaining in the third quarter.

There was a dominant point guard too with the Knicks’ Raymond Felton going against Steve Nash for his first career triple-double (23 points, 11 assists, 10 rebounds).

It was such a rout that D’Antoni used his bench as New York took a 34-point, fourth-quarter lead, the Suns’ largest deficit of the season. It was the Suns’ second worst home loss since 2000 and the Knicks’ biggest blowout of the season.

“We’re a little inconsistent,” Nash said. “We’ve lost some confidence but we’ve got to fight through it. We’ve got to find a way to be tough and we’ve got to find a way to win some of these games and not feel sorry for ourselves, not hang our heads, not lose our spirit when things aren’t going for us.”

The coaching friends played some pregame chess with starting lineups with both making last-minute changes to small-ball lineups.

Suns coach Alvin Gentry already was settled on not starting Robin Lopez in favor of Mickael Pietrus but was going to start Channing Frye at center until the Knicks went with Toney Douglas instead of Ronny Turiaf. Gentry started Josh Childress at center, putting the new Suns’ No. 1 in the jump-ball circle with the former one.

The potentially scintillating offensive matchup had an ugly first half. Stoudemire had 19 points and six rebounds, carrying the Knicks to a 55-45 halftime lead because his teammates were 13 of 31 from the field and made 11 of the team’s 12 turnovers.

The Suns’ recent offensive struggles continued, no matter what mix of 10 Suns Gentry tried in a 40 percent shooting first half with nine turnovers that made New York’s 12 turnovers unimportant.

Suns report

Key player: Former Suns star Amar’e Stoudemire was cheered upon introduction and scored 19 of his 23 points in the first half.

Key moment: In June, when Stoudemire accepted New York’s maximum-contract offer over Phoenix’s offer.

Key number: 1. Times that the Suns had not held a lead in a game this season until doing it again Friday night.

View from press row

As a 7-footer, Robin Lopez falls a long way. On Friday, he went from starting the previous 10 games to being the only one of 11 Suns not to play in the first half. Coach Alvin Gentry said he met with Lopez after Thursday’s practice, when Lopez said he had been focusing on traditional big-man tasks and Gentry told him he needed him to get back to being an athletic big man.

New York coach Mike D’Antoni dined Thursday night with Suns coach Alvin Gentry, maintaining one of his few Suns ties since he left in 2008.

D’Antoni nearly has as many of his former Suns with him (Amar’e Stoudemire) as remain with his last Suns team (Steve Nash and Grant Hill). With favor for the trio, D’Antoni said don’t discount the sub-.500 Suns.

“You have to have really good players that believe in everything you’re doing and will go through everything you’re doing,” D’Antoni said. “They have it now and they’ll get back on track.”

Gentry joined D’Antoni’s Suns staff for the 2004 turnaround and restored his system when he became head coach in 2009.

“He’s hanging in there,” D’Antoni said. “Alvin’s a good coach. He’ll figure it out. Anytime you make a trade, it’s tough at first but it’ll settle back down and he’ll try to make a run.”

The Suns lean hard on Nash to make it work with six players back from a conference finals team.

“It’s tough but if you have to throw new parts at somebody, Steve is the best guy to do it,” D’Antoni said. “He’ll make it work somehow. There’ll be bumps in the road but that’s the guy to test.”

After Steve Nash had his nose busted open in Game 1, the teams battled fiercely and the Spurs entered Game 4 with a 2-1 series edge.

They appeared on the brink of taking a commanding 3-1 lead as they led 97-92 with 2:32 left.

It was then that Nash and Amar’e Stoudemire led a furious comeback that gave the Suns a lead in the closing seconds.  However, the Spurs, who never met a cheap shot they didn’t like, were not going to take a loss quietly.

With 18 seconds left, Spurs forward Robert Horry cemented his place as the biggest villain in Suns history.

Nash took possession and dribbled along the sidelines when Horry threw a hard, and exceedingly cheap, hockey style check that propelled Nash into the scorer’s table.

The Suns bench erupted in warranted anger, with Stoudemire and Boris Diaw each taking a few steps onto the court.  Despite doing nothing provocative, the NBA to suspend Stoudemire and Diaw for the crucial Game 5, which the shorthanded Suns lost.  The decision by the NBA was highly controversial, prompting ESPN’s Chris Sheridan to label it “utterly, profoundly, alarmingly, unreasonably ridiculous.”

The Suns correctly pointed out that the NBA had failed to take similar action earlier in the series against Tim Duncan, but to no avail.