Carmelo Anthony called Friday’s Game 3 a “must-win” for the Knicks, who are in an 0-2 hole against the Celtics.

The former Nuggets star knows of what he speaks. Three times in his Nuggets career Anthony fell into a 0-2 deficit, and those teams never made it past Game 5.

In the 2007-08 season, the Nuggets got walloped by the Lakers 128-114 and 122-107 before heading home for Game 3, where they were walloped 102-84. The Lakers, the No. 1 seed that year on their way to losing to the Celtics in the NBA Finals, would complete the first-round sweep with a 107-101 win. Anthony fouled out in the closing minutes as the Lakers won the only close game of the series.

Two years earlier, the Nuggets fell to the other Los Angeles team in five games after falling down 2-0. Yes, it was just five years ago that the Clippers made their last playoff appearance. The Clippers defense stifled the Nuggets throughout: Anthony averaged 21 points a game, but the Nuggets never scored above 94 in the series that ended in five games with Denver taking Game 3 at home.

In Anthony’s rookie season, he revitalized the downtrodden Nuggets and got them back in the playoffs for the first time since 1995. But Denver was no match for top-seeded Minnesota, led as Boston is now, by Kevin Garnett. The Timberwolves won the first two games by 14 points apiece before the Nuggets rolled in Game 3 to a 107-86 win led by Anthony’s 24 points. But in Game 4 Anthony went 1-for-16 from the floor with two points in an 84-82 defeat that put the Nuggets down 3-1 on their way to a five-game elimination.

Anthony must be hoping that with a new uniform comes new fortune in rallying from series deficits.