Anthony hasn’t earned right to be franchise steward
THERE was a touching post on Carmelo Anthony’s Twitter page Thursday afternoon, in the hours before the NBA held its annual player draft.
“Congrats to all the hard working players living out their dreams tonight,” was the message, and below that a smiling picture of a baby-faced Melo himself, on draft night 2003, captioned: “Embrace this moment.”
Absent from that sentiment was what seems to have been the second half of Anthony’s memorandum, unspoken until after the Knicks selected Kristaps Porzingis with the fourth pick of the draft, which went something like this “… unless you’re a skinny center with a high ceiling but low immediate expectations.”
Maybe he deleted that part.
Look, at the top: Phil Jackson may have blown this pick and will doom the Knicks for another decade. Or he may have made a smart, cunning choice that will reap dividends down the road, with many of those weeping, howling, booing Knicks fans ultimately opting to buy one Porzingis jersey for every day of the week.
We don’t know. We won’t know. There were plenty of reports that plenty of NBA executives were charmed by Porzingis and taken by his workouts, but only one executive actually put those affections and affectations squarely on the line: Jackson. And whether it works out or not, you have to concede this much:
Jackson went for the long view here, in a job in which he is decidedly short-time, whether he fulfills the length of his contract or not. And it’s almost certain that if Porzingis is to reach whatever his max is — Dirk Nowitzki? Pau Gasol? — it will be someone other than Jackson who will reap that benefit. Right or wrong, he eschewed the narrow view.
But there is someone else whose best basketball years may well be numbered by the time Porzingis pops, and that’s Anthony. The last time he met with reporters, a few days after the season ended, Anthony talked about how much basketball he had been watching while recuperating from knee surgery, how he had transformed his home office into a general manager’s suite. It’s not likely he spent much time studying grainy YouTube footage of his new teammate. Reports Friday indicated Anthony was anywhere between annoyed and betrayed by Jackson’s decision, and that is too predictable, when you think about it.
It is also too bad.
It’s hard to know whom Anthony identified as the player left on the board who would have given the Knicks an instant boost of life, and a quick push toward contention. Tim Duncan’s name wasn’t on it. Patrick Ewing’s wasn’t. So if we’re just talking about this from a practical standpoint it’s odd — and, truthfully, maybe even wrong, because in Jerian Grant the Knicks may well have stumbled into a player who actually might provide immediate help. But, really, that’s beside the point. This is the point: Melo isn’t Patrick Ewing.
And not just from a standpoint of standing within the firmament of all-time NBA greats. After a while, it became an annual right or sporting passage to lament and bemoan the shortage of pieces the Knicks kept surrounding Ewing with in his endless and fruitless attempt to win a championship. Of course, Ewing himself never would have said that publicly, but ball doesn’t lie and neither do results.
That’s always been a puzzling disconnect with Anthony: He demands the gravitas of a franchise cornerstone without having put in the years — or having achieved a fraction of the success — that someone like Ewing did. He wants to come across as a team-first guy (and a segment of hungry Knicks fans believe him), but he is defined by a series of me-f irst moves — from choosing to stay for money, to putting off surgery long enough so he could play in a New York All-Star Game, to his preferred system of iso-heavy offense.
None of those things make him a bad person, certainly none make him a bad player. But he has had a tough enough time being the Face of the Franchise (who, by the way, is coming off knee surgery) doing what he does best — playing.
It’s funny: One of the things that likely will endear Porzingis to the skeptical masses is his clear and genuine ambition to seize New York, to enjoy all the unique aspects of playing here. It is a feeling all too uncommon among professional athletes in 2015. Anthony should recognize that. He is also a guy who said “yes” when so many others said “no” — and he said it twice.
That should be something that bonds them. Melo could have clarified his position Friday. Instead, he issued another tweet: “‘What’s understood doesn’t need to be spoken upon’ #DestiNY #TheFutureIsNow”.
And you thought Phil Jackson was cryptic?