Anthony scored 40 points and the Knicks got key contributions from J.R. Smith and Raymond Felton during a 19-5 fourth-quarter run that sparked New York to its 10th straight victory, 95-82 over Atlanta on Wednesday night.

“Melo is smart enough to know that if he’s doubled, he’ll sacrifice the ball,” Knicks coach Mike Woodson said. “And we’ve got enough shooters around him that are making big shots. That opens it up for him even more. And when he gets going like he did tonight, they’re not going to leave him alone very often.”

Anthony, who scored 50 in his last game at Miami, scored 26 in the first half. He commanded more defensive attention in the second half, which left opportunities for Smith, who scored 19, and Felton, who scored 14. Felton’s quickness to the basket resulted in three straight scores during a 12-2 streak that turned a tie game into an 84-74 Knicks lead that was never threatened.

“A lot of (Anthony’s) points came off the bounce, with just two or three dribbles, and then a quick pull-up,” Woodson said. “When he got doubled, he got the ball out. It was kind of nice to play off him tonight.”

Atlanta forward Al Horford admitted, “He hit a lot of tough shots. I think he was very comfortable out there. We probably should have tried to pressure him more.”

Anthony made 17 of 27 from the field and was 5 for 6 at the line. He also had five rebounds and three assists, with only one turnover.

“The rhythm was there and I wanted to see if I still had it going,” Anthony said. “It was just one of those nights once again. I feel like when I have the opportunity, I just want to take my time and take it when I’m open and then find the open man when I’m doubled.”

The game was tied at 72 with 9:48 left when New York took control. The Knicks outscored the Hawks 23-10 the rest of the way, as Felton scored 10 in the final period.

“I think our coverages were bad,” Hawks guard Jeff Teague said. “I should have backed up a little bit on Raymond Felton and let him shoot a contested shot. But I got up a little bit and he used his speed to get by me.”

The win puts New York in sole possession of second place in the Eastern Conference.

“This team is playing for something,” Woodson said. “We know every game counts. We’ve had our ups and downs because of injuries, but we’ve just got to finish this regular season out.”

Atlanta lost the opportunity to move into a tie for fourth place in the Eastern Conference and wasted a 25-point effort by Kyle Korver, who came up two points short of his season high.

“They were switching a lot of things trying to take away Josh (Smith) and Al and I was able to get some looks in the first half,” Korver said. “I tried to knock them down.”

Korver moved into third place on the all-time list for consecutive games with a 3-point basket. Korver passed Reggie Miller at 10:54 in the first quarter when he made a 3-pointer from the right side. He’s now connected for a trey in 69 straight games. Korver is still a long away from catching Dana Barros (89 consecutive games), but is within distance of Dennis Scott (78) and Michael Adams (79).

“We played a very hot basketball team,” Hawks coach Larry Drew said. “Particularly Carmelo, who’s playing at a very high level right now, shooting the ball extremely, extremely well. I thought there were times we defended him well. He still made shots.”

Game notes

Atlanta forward John Jenkins missed his third game since suffering a concussion against Boston. … Atlanta’s Devin Harris was not available because of foot injury. He had rehab treatment on Wednesday. … The Syracuse men’s basketball team attended the game. The team is in town to compete in the NCAA Final Four. … Also at courtside was comedian Conan O’Brien.

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Mike Brown (Los Angeles) gone five games into the season; Avery Johnson (Brooklyn) gone the day after Christmas, 28 games into the season; Scott Skiles (Milwaukee) gone 32 games in, when his team fell to .500 for the fourth time this season. Gentry lasted 41 games.

And somehow, there have been no Phil Jackson (or Stan Van Gundy) sightings.

Since the firings, the Lakers, Nets and Bucks have gone three different directions. The Nets are 9-2 post-AJ, the Lakers are 16-18 since firing Brown, the Bucks 3-3 since Skiles was asked to return the keys. One coach is catching hell (Mike D’Antoni with the Lakers), one is so under-the-radar that hardly anyone knows he is a current head coach of an NBA team (Jim Boylan with the Bucks), one is on pace to have a statue built in his likeness outside the Barclays Center (P.J. Carlesimo with the Nets). With the Suns, it’s too early to tell.

Each team had different reasons for enforcing a head coaching change when it did. The results of each are so all over the place that it’s hard to determine if there is a right or wrong in what each team did, the way the teams went about doing it and/or the arguable timing of them all.

No rhyme, less reason. Nothing seems to fit when the immediate results are so random and varied. Owners flip a coin, hoping it’ll land on the opposite side of their current results.

Just two weeks ago, we watched the NFL fire seven coaches on Black Monday. The NBA? Owners don’t have patience like that. They embrace change in a different way. They react with quickness. Regardless of how the firings are rationalized internally or justified publicly, two things are certain: Job security for an NBA coach is maybe the greatest oxymoron in sports, and there is no assurance that the immediate results under a new leader will give any team the answer it sought.

For instance, there were four coaching changes during the 2011-12 shortened season. Of those four, three of the coaches were retained and have not been pink-slipped. Yet.

Yet, there’s no telling if Randy Wittman in Washington, Keith Smart in Sacramento or Mike Woodson in New York (although he seems relatively safe, nothing is guaranteed if the Knicks fall out of the top four seeding in the East or the “Amar’e Experiment” doesn’t work out soon) were the right choices. There’s no telling if there would be any difference if the teams did what Orlando did when it rode the season out with the existing/sacrificial coach, dismissed him in the offseason, hired the guy the owner and organization “really” wanted (Jacque Vaughn) and began the new season fresh.

The Bulls waited until the offseason to hire Tom Thibodeau a few years ago, as did the Clippers with Vinny Del Negro and Golden State with Mark Jackson. Indiana did not with Frank Vogel. And all these teams are remarkably better than they were the day the current coaches took over.

Go figure.

In the NFL, going back a few years, Marty Schottenheimer (his first job) and Don Coryell (his second) replaced fired head coaches in the middle of a season, and their careers turned out well. In comparison, Jason Garrett took over the Cowboys in November 2010 when Jerry Jones fired Wade Phillips after a 1-7 start. Now the odds are, even after two 8-8 full seasons as Jerry’s puppet, Garrett might not make it to Black Monday next year.

In the NHL, Ken Hitchcock took over a 6-7-0 team in St. Louis last season and proceeded to finish 49-22-11 and first in the Central. Bruce Boudreau was on both ends of an owner’s midseason whims: fired in D.C. with a 12-9-1 record only to be hired by Anaheim and go 27-23-8 with a team that finished last in the Pacific, even after improving under him.

In MLB. In the English Premier League. In the National Rugby League. In any team sport at the pro level, the same theory-less theory holds true. The results prove to be the same: inconclusive. Same no rhyme. Same less reason.

So how do we judge and or generalize when it is a good/bad, appropriate/inexcusable, smart/incompetent time to fire/hire head coaches?

The best example of how (and why) there may never be an answer to this, especially in the NBA where the coaching carousel can get extreme and thoughtless, can be found in the head coaching history of Gregg Popovich in San Antonio.

He, too, was an interim coach who replaced Bob Hill 18 games into the 1996-97 season. (His was one of eight midseason coaching changes by seven teams.) Since then, Popovich has gone on to become the sensei of all active coaches. And he would be the perfect example of the upside to firing a coach during or somewhere in the middle of an NBA season if … at the time he wasn’t the GM and VP of basketball operations for the Spurs and he hadn’t appointed himself as head coach.

Despite owners’ certainty that a change on the bench will bring different results, flipping a coin often lands with the same ugly results staring them in the face. Heads or tails. And sometimes, because they limit their thinking to those two options, either this or that, they’re surprised when it lands on the coin’s narrow third surface, spinning on its edge.

Coaches in all sports come and go. Coaches in the NBA just seem to do so at an advanced pace.

When it comes to the revolving door at the core of most relationships between ownership and a head coach, how the coin will land after it stops spinning is too hard to guess. A few games midseason rarely determine — especially in the NBA — the good decision/bad decision outcome of a bad fire/new hire.

Or is it new fire/bad hire? Looking at the immediate results, I can’t tell if there’s even any difference.

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