NEW YORK -- Not much heat from the Atlanta Hawks for Jeremy Lin and the New York Knicks. That's likely to change Thursday night when it's Lin vs. LeBron in Miami.

Lin had 17 points and nine assists, sitting out most of the fourth quarter in a rare easy game during his remarkable run, and the Knicks tuned up for their trip by beating Atlanta 99-82 on Wednesday.

Carmelo Anthony scored 15 points in his second game back from injury for the Knicks, who led the depleted Hawks by 25 points at halftime. New York bounced back from a loss to New Jersey on Monday and won for the ninth time in 11 games since Lin, the former Palo Alto High star, joined the rotation.

The Knicks visit Miami on Thursday in their final game before the All-Star break, and Lin's emergence has the Heat's attention.

"It's going to be a lot of, a lot of anticipation about this game," Anthony said. "We're going down there to win. Miami is playing great basketball right now. One of the hottest teams, if not the hottest team in the NBA.

"It'll be a great game."

LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and teammates have been asked repeatedly in recent days about the ex-Harvard guard, and coach Mike D'Antoni was told the word out of Miami is the Heat will be waiting for Lin.

"At the airport?" he joked.

Not quite. But whatever they do will provide more resistance than the Hawks, who trailed by as many as 30.

Jeff Teague scored 18 points for the Hawks. They

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played without All-Star guard Joe Johnson, who left their loss at Chicago on Monday with a sore left knee and had to pull out of Sunday's game in Orlando, and have lost three straight and five of six.

"Coming into this game, being as depleted as we were, I still was hoping we could come out and just put together four solid quarters. We just didn't do that," Hawks coach Larry Drew said.

The Knicks shot 52 percent in the first half, scored 30 points in both periods, and led 60-35 at the break.

"We are professionals. They just came out and they attacked us," Teague said. "That's all I can really say."

The Knicks lost their focus briefly midway through the third before pulling away again to lead 78-56 heading into the fourth. Lin watched the first six-plus minutes of the final period before D'Antoni curiously put him back in leading by 20 with 5:13 left. Lin still played only 33 minutes after he logged at least 36 in all but one of the previous 10 games.

He'll likely need to do more against the Heat, which has won seven in a row and has the NBA's best record at 26-7

  • Covering Lin has been easy for Sports Illustrated. The high-scoring Knicks newcomer is on the cover of SI for the second week in a row. He's the first New York-based team athlete to be given such treatment since the magazine started in 1954 -- not even Mickey Mantle, Joe Namath or Eli Manning made two straight.

    Lin became a global star after getting a chance to start for the Knicks. The unheralded point guard is playing with a flair that has revitalized the team and the fans.

  • Lin wants to own the term "Lin-sanity." He moved to take control of the catch phrase that's encapsulated his meteoric rise, filing an application on Feb. 13 with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, according to the agency's website.

    The filing came six days after Yenchin Chang, a 35-year-old Alhambra resident with no ties to Lin, became the first to apply for a Lin-sanity trademark, according to the website. A second filing was made on Feb. 9 by Andrew W. Slayton of Los Altos, and on Feb. 14 there was another filing by Yoonsoo Stephen Kim of Duluth, Ga.

    Bloomberg News contributed to this report.

    Lin's line
    Jeremy Lin's numbers from Wednesday night:
    Points 17
    Assists 9
    Steals 2
    Rebounds 2
    Turnovers 4