X-MAS MIRACLE!
Melo, Knicks snap 10-game slide with win over Celtics
Carmelo Anthony ends long day − which starts with star shooting down report that he’d consider bolting team − with smile on his face as Knicks down Celtics, 101-95, for first win in 20 days. However, it’s not all good news as Iman Shumpert dislocates left shoulder and will get an MRI today.
The Knicks have been as bad as anybody in the sport since the second game of the season, when they walked into Cleveland on the night of LeBron’s homecoming and beat the Cavaliers. They are as bad right now as they have been at any time over the last 15 years. Somehow people act as if this is all Carmelo Anthony’s fault. It’s not.
Anthony decided to put his faith in an institution — the New York Knicks — the way others have before him. Anthony got paid, he sure did. He took the best deal for himself, essentially betting against himself in the process, because if he thought he’d still be playing at his highest level in a couple of years, he could have commanded $30 million a year or more.
He still signed the rest of his prime over to the Knicks, and to Phil Jackson, and also to that cult-like triangle offense you were told last spring would end up as part of the city’s skyline. Now Anthony sees the stark reality of that decision. And must wonder already if that offense suits a 69-year-old Hall of Fame coach — one who no longer coaches — way better than it suits the player on whom that Hall of Fame coach just bestowed a $124 million contract.
You get to blame Anthony for bad judgment, if winning a championship before his knees give out is truly his goal. You are allowed to think he is the highestpaid loser in the sport. But you don’t get to blame him for the 2014-15 Knicks.
When Anthony was asked if he is already looking to leave the Knicks, just 24 games into his new deal, this is what he said in Boston on Friday:
“Come on, man. After all the work I did to get here and get back here? If I was to get up and want to leave now that would just make me weak, make me have a weak mind. I’ve never been a person to try to run from any adversity or anything like that so I’m not going to pick today to do that.”
We can have a really good debate about how good he really is, if he is one of the 10 best players in the sport. We can wonder how one of the most complete college freshmen I have ever seen became a guy who only wanted to shoot once he got to the pros. But if you are going to fairly evaluate Anthony’s NBA career, who really is the best all-around player he’s ever had as a teammate, in Denver or here, Chauncey Billups? Or was it the Allen Iverson who became his teammate in Denver?
You know who his best secondary scorer has been here: J.R. Smith. It was pretty much the same way for Patrick when he had J. Starks as his wingman.
Nobody is saying that Carmelo would have won titles in Miami the way Dwyane Wade did if he’d been the one with Shaq and then LeBron. But guess what? Wade wasn’t being called one of the great winners in basketball before he did get with those guys. And how many titles did Paul Pierce, whom my friend Bob Ryan calls the best scoring machine in Boston Celtics history, win before Pierce got with Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen in Boston?
Oh sure, make up your own mind about Carmelo, trying to answer the big question that may never be answered about him, whether or not you can win a title with him as your best player. But then ask yourself if Phil Jackson’s triangle offense is somehow more important than getting Anthony a real point guard in a point guard league. Look at what he did two years ago when he had a 40-year-old Jason Kidd passing him the ball. “I didn’t have any expectations (about this season) but be better than we were last year, make some improvements and strides to where we’re getting better for the future,” he said in Boston.
In his own odd, dramatic way, though, Anthony continues to show you how much the Knicks still matter, despite all those before him who came to save them and ended up getting carried out of the ring, or run out of town. He has officially become the great lightning rod of the city in sports, much more than A-Rod, who thinks he is but who doesn’t matter anymore. All you have to do is mention Anthony’s name, and people knock you over to choose up sides for the great debate: Winner or loser?
Basketball fans of the city either love him or hate him. You have heard it all. The Knicks were crazy to give him all that
money or would have been crazy to let him walk away. He is too selfish to ever be the best player on a championship team. Or he has never had the right players around him the way Patrick never did, even though Patrick did more here than Carmelo ever will, and his teams made it to the NBA Finals twice.
What we know for sure: He wanted New York and got it when he left Denver and now when he had the chance to leave New York, he decided to stay. Of course money was the biggest factor here, even as he tried to make it sound as if him returning to the Knicks was somehow as emotional as LeBron returning to the Cavaliers.
Now he has his money. He has the city. He has the Garden. And, boy oh boy, he has the Knicks. He is the one who decided to stay, even as people already ask him if he wants to leave. You wonder who will last longer here, him or Phil.