MELO FED UP AFTER LATEST FLOP
ON THE five-year anniversary of the trade that brought Carmelo Anthony from Denver to his dysfunctional franchise, the telling storyline was that everybody – the media, the fans – were clamoring for a D-League call-up.
That’s what this season has been reduced to for the Knicks, who were blown away Monday by the Raptors, 122-95, despite the excitement for Jimmer Fredette’s debut. It was especially depressing circumstances for the team’s lone All-Star, who is losing patience as another spring arrives with little hope for the playoffs.
“It’s frustrating when you out there and trying to back and you dig yourself a hole. You look up. Everything has to go your way at that point,” Anthony said. “You work so hard to make a run, you look up, you’re still down 15 or 16.”
Typically the last player to leave the locker room, Anthony was fully dressed and ready to speak when the media arrived. He then ripped into the team’s effort on a night New York (24-34) lost for the 12th time in its last 14 games.
“We got to want to do it. We got to want to be out there, we got to want to play, we got to want to compete,” he said. “I don’t think it has anything to do with X’s and O’s. We got to take it upon ourselves individually to take a challenge. We can’t beat nobody allowing (58) points in the paint. Impossible.”
So why was Anthony so quick to leave the Garden?
“I need to go home and just relax,” he said. “Decompress a little bit.
“Regardless of the record. It’s the losing. It’s hard to accept that.”
It was a familiar story for the Knicks’ defense, which allowed the Raptors to shoot 53%, dominate the paint and hit 11 3-pointers. Toronto’s Kyle Lowry dropped a tripledouble with 22 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists. Anthony scored a team-high 23 points for the Knicks. Rinse. Repeat.
Anthony has been through four coaches since joining the Knicks in 2011, and his current one, Kurt Rambis, was involved Monday in a Twitter pornography controversy. Anthony’s 70th teammate with this franchise was Fredette, whose arrival on a 10-day contract prompted chants from the crowd to get in the game. Rambis resisted until the final two minutes, when Fredette buried a 3-pointer and livened up the dreary atmosphere.
“I’m not going to displace somebody that’s been here all year and has been working hard i n practice,” Rambis said. “We kind of know what the individuals on the team bring, their strengths and weakness, so if there’s something that he can bring that’s a little bit better then he’ll get an opportunity. It’s really hard to just throw somebody in like that.”
Anthony, who logged 37 minutes, took no consolation in the brief Jimmer Time – which amounted to 109 seconds of Garbage Time. The Knicks, who haven’t won a home game in February, need to go 18-8 just to finish .500 this season, an increasingly unlikely breach into mediocrity. “It’s been tough,” Anthony said. “It’s challenging to stay strong and positive throughout this.”