Mounting losses weigh on Anthony
Knicks’ absent defense, inability to finish games testing team’s All-Star
ATLANTA Carmelo Anthony’s legacy is on the line with his next contract, so perhaps that is why the chaos of the New York Knicks’ season made him shake his head on the bench with a look of torment early in the fourth quarter against the Atlanta Hawks on Saturday and carry that torment right into the locker room after the game.
He wants to compete for a championship in New York, but the Knicks’ injuries, pending buyouts of veterans, mounting losses and terrible defense are weighing on him. Soon, there could be turmoil around coach Mike Woodson and his job security, which could make it all an intolerable brew.
“It’s starting to get tough to handle,” Anthony said after the Knicks blew a 17-point lead and lost to an undermanned Atlanta team that had been winless in eight games.
He stood next to his locker for 41⁄2 minutes and was not ’ Melo the Optimist, but ’Melo the Dour.
The Knicks have lost two in a row and five of their last six and eight of their last 10. They are 2135 and in 11th place in the Eastern Conference playoff standings, even in a season in which the East can muster just two highcaliber teams.
The Knicks cannot guard the other team, especially on the perimeter, so they immediately hand the ball to Anthony and ask him to fix everything: the injuries, the defense, the lack of depth. The buoyancy that came with a 54-28 season in 2012-13 and a playoff series win has all but evaporated, so he has to fix the team’s brittle psyche, too.
“It’s definitely testing me,” Anthony said. “The frustration has definitely sunk in, just from the simple fact we’re losing games the same way over and over and we’re just not learning from that.”
The Knicks superstar said during All-Star Weekend that he is going to opt out of the final year of his contract this summer and become a free agent. That is what basketball players do. He wants to be a Knick, the hero who restores the franchise’s luster, but under what circumstances?
Anthony said his teammates’ body language in the second half Saturday revealed a lack of assertiveness.
The club wanted to find point guard help at the trade deadline last week to deal with lickety-split scorers and rim runners such as the Hawks’ Jeff Teague, who abused New York for 28 points Saturday, but there was no deal. Rookie Tim Hardaway Jr. and veteran Raymond Felton were no match for Teague’s quickness.
Anthony did not want to talk about the Knicks’ whiff at the trade deadline, but he would talk about the sinkhole that is swallowing the Knicks, who are playing without injured 7-footer Andrea Bargnani and guard Iman Shumpert and are using a sevenman rotation.
“Hopefully it will turn around before it is too late,” he said. “Right now we’re digging our- selves into a much deeper hole. It’s not early in the season anymore, so we can’t use that excuse. Finding a way to finish out games, finish out quarters is something that we got to do and have to do coming down to these next 20 some games.”
Felton is the guard who is sup- posed to be the counter to a guy such as Teague. Felton is 29, and he has become a scapegoat. The Knicks can’t do this and the Knicks can’t do that and Felton is getting much of the blame because, well, the Knicks worked up until the trade deadline to find another point guard. He became agitated when a reporter asked him if he was healthy and able to guard and if he was being blamed for the losses because the Knicks were trying to get a point guard to replace him.
“I’m healthy, nothing wrong,” Felton said.
“I don’t talk about trade talk. If that’s what you want to talk about, we can end this now. No trade talk.”
And feeling like the scapegoat? “I don’t feel like anything. It’s a business. I understand that.”
There has to be some worry Anthony will be at the end of the bench in April with an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. He is a sturdy 6-8, but on back-toback nights he couldn’t carry the burden of a team with a short bench and subpar defense. A night after playing 50 minutes in a double-overtime loss to the Orlando Magic, Anthony made just three of 11 shots in the fourth quarter against the Hawks and the Knicks lost 107-98.
Might he eventually wear down?
“If I start telling myself that I’m worn down and start putting that stuff into my mind, I’m going to start feeling like that,” Anthony said. “As of right now I’m not feeling like that, so I won’t even put that in the air like that.”