ANTHONY- KNICKS SAGA COMES TO CROSSROADS
Even with Jackson gone, star could end up traded
Shortly before the NBA trade deadline this past season, a strange convergence of deja vu struck at Madison Square Garden.
With the Charlotte Hornets on hand, New York Knicks fans rose to their feet and delivered a standing ovation for Patrick Ewing, serving at the time as an assistant coach for the Hornets and heralded with the usual “Once a Knick, always a Knick,” introduction over the public- address system.
Then, later in the game, fans voiced their emotions again with shouts of, “Keep Melo” and “We love you, Melo” for Carmelo Anthony and perhaps more aptly for Phil Jackson, then the team president, sitting about a dozen rows up from center court. The fans seemed to understand better than the front office that sometimes you don’t need distance to make the heart grow fonder.
Maybe it was the presence of Ewing, who took decades to concede that he should have finished out his time in New York rather than give in to the frustration, but Anthony at the time was just 10 days past a meeting in which he had told Jackson and Steve Mills, who later replaced Jackson as team president, that he wanted to stay in New York and win in New York, and he looked at his own situation and Ewing’s and saw a thread.
“As a student of the game, you know what people go through in their own respective situations,” Anthony said. “Knowing the history of the game and knowing the history of here and the players, he was
one of those guys who kind of can relate to what I’m going through. Being able to still try to perform at a high level and block everything out. I mean, that’s somebody I can say understands what I’m dealing with.” But Ewing left. “It wasn’t his fault,” Anthony said, laughing for a moment before adding, “It wasn’t his fault.”
Anthony has not laughed much since then. While Jackson has been dismissed as team president, in no small part because of his 18- month war with Anthony, the Knicks star seems destined to depart the franchise. After so much prodding, Anthony relented and gave the team permission to try to work a trade that would send him to the Houston Rockets, where he could join forces with his longtime friend, Chris Paul, as well as James Harden, and be part of a contending team.
With Jackson out, there has been no move to a peaceful resolution. Anthony seems set on leaving, and the Knicks’ revamped front office has openly expressed a desire to shift the focus of the team to a youthful core. With a little more than a month remaining until the start of training camp, neither side has blinked.
THE STRUGGLES
History tells you that sometimes it is only with time that you realize exactly what you had. Ewing, now readying for his first season as head coach of his alma mater, Georgetown, is probably the greatest player in Knicks history. But the frustration came as he never delivered the championship that was expected when he was selected with the No. 1 overall pick in 1985.
“After hearing rumbles in the locker room from your teammates that we’re better off without him, you just get sick and tired of it,” Ewing told Adrian Wojnarowski on the Vertical podcast last year. “So I’m like, ‘ You know what? Let me go. Be better off without me.’ I decided enough is enough, and I asked for a trade. I should have stayed ( in New York). I wish I hadn’t done it. I should have ended my career there.”
If Anthony goes, how will his time be regarded? Will he someday return to standing ovations like Ewing has? Right now, it’s hard to predict with a more complicated tenure at Madison Square Garden.
“I have a really high opinion of him,” said one Eastern Conference scout, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly. “Because he’s put up with a lot of bull. This guy gets so much unfair criticisms. He’s still one of the most prolific scorers in the game. The triangle ( offense) tied him up and tied up ( Kristaps) Porzingis.
“He’s not a star star anymore, but he is still an offensive go- to player. If they didn’t mess with him, he’d be more valuable.”
Unlike Ewing, whose only controversy regarding his arrival was whether the lottery was fixed for the Knicks, Anthony forced his way out of the Denver Nuggets and to the Knicks with a 2011 trade delivering a star but costing the franchise an abundance of talent. It wasn’t just Danilo Gallinari, Wilson Chandler, Timofey Mozgov and Raymond Felton, but a bevy of draft picks that didn’t stop haunting the franchise until the final one was delivered in 2016.
The Knicks made the playoffs in each of his first three seasons in New York, capped by a 54- win season with a trip to the Eastern Conference semifinals in 2012- 13, with Anthony finishing third in the NBA’s Most Valuable Player balloting.
But with the arrival of Jackson, a string of 10 playoff appearances for Anthony ended and the Knicks were 80166 over the last three seasons, levels of futility that Ewing never endured in New York.
During Anthony’s time in New York, there have been five head coaches and four general managers, as well as more teammates than he can count. He is the lone player left from Jackson’s arrival in March 2014.
THE FUTURE
Just as the chants emerged at times in favor of Anthony in his war with Jackson, fans might have a better appreciation than the franchise for what Anthony has brought to the team. He remains, at 33, the team’s top scorer and has served as a mentor to Porzingis.
After all of the trouble, could he return — the way that Ewing now wishes he once did — pushing aside the emotions?
“If they have to live with him, he won’t tank,” the scout said. “People talk about him like he’s a dog; from an objective standpoint, I think he competed. You surround him with bad players, and it looks worse. But when he’s played with good players — and he hasn’t had many in New York or Denver — he always competes hard.”
One executive from another NBA team, also not authorized to speak publicly about the situation, said, “His value is with a team that needs one more piece to get over the top. But the Knicks can’t give him away.”
That is an approach that Mills has taken since replacing Jackson. Anthony, with the no- trade clause that Jackson gave him, has only relented on Houston, while there have been overtures from the Cleveland Cavaliers, Portland Trail Blazers and Oklahoma City Thunder about possible deals.
“If he were to open ( the no- trade clause) up,” the executive said, “they would have tons of offers on the table.”
“As it relates to Carmelo we’ve been in contact with Carmelo’s representatives,” Mills said last month. “We’ve been in contact with other teams. Our view is if there’s an opportunity that works for Carmelo and works for us, then we’ll look at some kind of trade. But we also feel that Carmelo could easily be a part of our team next year. We have to understand how we’re going to play and what the expectations of how we’re going to play. We’re going to move forward so maybe with Carmelo or without Carmelo.”
Without him, the Knicks certainly will take a step back, so far unable to bring anything close to an equal return. And, for now, Anthony is dropping few hints on what he wants or what he would accept.
“I’ve been good. I’ve been away from the fray,” Anthony told reporters in Baltimore on Wednesday. “You haven’t heard comments from me. I’m growing my hair out right now, spending time with the family. I’m being an AAU dad right now. That’s what matters to me at this point. Nothing else really matters.
“But I had to find peace, I had to come to peace with myself, come to peace with kind of the situation I’m in, kind of try to find happiness again. I kind of lost that a little bit, but I’m finding it now, and it feels good.”