By BRIAN LEWIS

Mike D’Antoni, about as eternally optimistic as Little Orphan Annie, insists his Knicks played good defense in allowing 61 points to Kobe Bryant, and have nothing to be embarrassed about in letting him break Bernard King’s Garden record. But David Lee admits it left some injured egos in the locker room.

“Obviously that was a tremendous performance. You never want to see a guy have 60 points, much less in your own building,” Lee said. “But it’s not as though a guy who averages 10 points a game somehow had 60: That’s the best player in the NBA _ or two best players in the NBA _ came out and had a tremendous game and got hot.

“It’s disappointing, it hurts your pride a little bit; but we’re going to have to come out and just keep playing. We have no other choice.”

Bryant surpassed Michael Jordan’s famous 1995 double-nickel, the most ever by a Knick foe at the Garden. He even erased King’s Garden-record 60 points on Christmas Day, 1984. Sacrilegious! Scandalous! But D’Antoni, who is clearly a glass-half-full kinda cat, was stunned by the very notion that they might be embarrassed at letting Bryant light them up.

“What, embarrassed that he’s really good? I don’t know why,” D’Antoni said. “He made some unbelievable shots. We had a chance to win the game and I didn’t think we played extremely well; but you have to take your hat off to the guy. He’s arguably the best player out there, one or two.”

He also dismissed the notion that the Knicks should’ve doubled the ball out of Kobe’s hands more, and forced other players like Pau Gasol (31 points and 14 boards) and Lamar Odom to try and beat them.

“I’ve heard that. When we doubled, Odom dunked and Gasol dunked. Again, it’s about beating the Lakers and whether he’s scoring or somebody else is (it doesn’t matter),” D’Antoni said. “Now we put him on the line way too many times, and he had four fast break points because we turned it over, missed a layup, or didn’t do our job down here.”