Are New York Knicks Preparing for Long-Term Future Without Carmelo Anthony?

There's a prevailing belief that NBA players need to go to memorable franchises to maximize the effect of their legacies. That strategy may not have worked for Carmelo Anthony.

The talk with big-name free agents every year is that they want to head to large markets to expand their basketball reach. But Anthony's situation with the New York Knicks has quickly become dreary.

It's more awkward than anything else. The Knicks clearly thought they were better than they actually were heading into last year when they signed Anthony to a five-year, $124 million contract. 

Knicks president Phil Jackson would like to have you think today that he knew New York would fall far short of the 2015 playoffs at the start of the season, but that wasn't the case. Actually, when the Knicks re-signed Anthony last July, they were talking about taking positive steps forward, not dropping off from a disappointing 37 wins to a unrespectable 17. 

''We believe we're going to be a playoff team,'' Jackson said back in September (h/t Brian Mahoney of the AP), ''And then we don't know how far we'll be able to go, but we're hoping for the best.''

But that tends to be the mentality after bringing back an eight-time All-Star, someone who was fresh off a scoring title just 15 months before signing his mega deal. Now, it appears the Knicks are going in a different direction, and it's possible both sides regret the deal only one year into it, as Frank Isola of the New York Daily News pointed out on Twitter:

Melo's career itinerary doesn't match up with the Knicks', and it almost doesn't matter what happens this offseason. They are not going to contend next year. Heck, they're not even going to be good.

The pieces already in town—Anthony, Langston Galloway, Jose Calderon, Cleanthony Early, Ricky Ledo—hardly make up for a team that puts fear into anyone in the East. Even though Melo is supposed to be healthy for the start of next season, which will clearly add on more wins than a Melo-less squad was able to score this past season, that doesn't exactly push the Knicks into basketball nobility.

Frank Franklin II/Associated Press

On top of that, selecting Kristaps Porzingis with the No. 4 pick during Thursday night's NBA draft indicates New York is veering in a different direction from where it normally turns on draft night. The Knicks, usually a team multiple pieces away from anything special, have spent more than a decade looking for a "quick fix" in the selection process. 

Jason Concepcion chronicled some smart thoughts on the Porzingis pick at Grantland shortly after the draft:

"

Knicks fans have wanted this team to think long-term, to stop flipping picks and young players for overpriced vets, to stop hunting for the final piece to a puzzle they’ve never even started to assemble. Phil Jackson did that last night. It may not work; the Knicks will need some luck. They could’ve taken the all-around balling Justise Winslow, or the long and athletic wide receiver turned defensive destroyer Willie Trill Cauley-Stein. Instead, they took a hard swing full of risk, but potentially laden with reward. Whether Porzingis works out or not, this process — working this way, thinking beyond the next two, three, or even five years — is how you build a team.

"

So, the implications behind the choice say the team is thinking differently than your average Knicks squad in the past. That's probably a good thing, right? Well, for everyone except for Melo, who won't be remembered in 25 years with a footnote next to his name saying, "Yeah, but the Knicks decided to rebuild halfway into his time with the team, so it's not really his fault he only went to one conference finals series."

Now, reports surface that Anthony isn't a fan of the Porzingis choice, which prioritizes long-term development over a win-now cork. "We have to wait three years for this guy?" he reacted, according to a "Knick source" of Isola's. And if you truly put yourself in his shoes, it's understandable. 

It would only be human for a 31-year-old who's had the "can't win a championship if he's your best player" label on him for at least a couple of years to want to, you know, win now. But if rushing the process isn't best for the team, then what else are the Knicks supposed to do?

Kathy Willens/Associated Press

In an ideal scenario, the timelines of your superstar and your organization line up. When they fall out of sync, you get awkward situations like the ones in New York or with the Los Angeles Lakers and Kobe Bryant.

By the time Anthony's deal runs out, he'll be going on 35 years old. He likely won't have another max-caliber deal in his future. He probably won't be capable of "leading" a team. Sure, he can still be a contributing factor to a winning team, but he's not going to be the first fiddle. And that matters, to some degree, when we look back on his career.

Think about it. It's the year 2036. You're sitting in front of your 3HP system (that's a 3D home projection system; TVs are soooo 20 years ago) and watching basketball with your kids. The subject of Carmelo Anthony comes up.

Do you talk about him the same way as you would Kevin Durant or Dwyane Wade, obviously superior players? Does the mere mention of his name force you to diverge from basketball completely and instead start a conversation about stylish hats? Or do you use the same tone as you would when discussing the career of Bernard King, a dominant scorer in the '80s who's still a Hall of Famer but on the lower end of the spectrum? 

There's nothing wrong with being Bernard King. That dude was a genius scorer. And so is Prime Melo. There's no debating otherwise, whether you're a fan of his offensive-minded style or not.

But I'm betting Anthony, a man all about his "brand," wants something slightly different for himself. If he didn't care about his reputation, why would he have pushed so hard to play in the Knicks' London-scheduled game this past season even though he was clearly hurt at the time? Why would he have sat out contest after contest with knee issues, come back purely for the All-Star Game in New York, and then immediately shut himself down for surgery after the weekend's festivities?

Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports

Anthony is transparent about his priorities and business endeavors—enough to endorse an ESPN the Magazine article from November purely about that subject.

Some knock him for it, but we should appreciate the honesty of a man who has been unfairly vilified as a bad teammate (try finding a former teammate who speaks ill of him) or a non-winner (tell that to Syracuse basketball fans), though he did deserve criticism for putting personal interests ahead of the team's while he was nursing his knee injury this season.

But the Knicks set him up for that with their out-of-touch philosophies that allow players to have more say than usual if they're healthy enough to play. And now, the organization has put itself in a position in which the process that's best for it is the one that's suboptimal for Anthony.

What happens to Melo if the Knicks bomb in free agency this summer? What happens if they end up with Greg Monroe and David West, putting together a frontcourt (along with Anthony) that could be good for allowing 120 points per game?

What happens if they are more frugal than expected this summer, holding out hope for the big names and bigger cap space of 2016 only to strike out in a similar fashion as they did in 2010 when the team wanted a LeBron James or Chris Bosh or Wade and ended up with Amar'e Stoudemire's uninsured knees? What's a 32-year-old Anthony supposed to think then?

We're not there yet, but it almost feels like, as Isola pointed out, we could get to a point when it's best for both parties to part. But only a year into one of the NBA's richest contracts, neither character in the Melo/Knicks story would be acquiescent enough to surrender. 

Follow Fred Katz on Twitter at @FredKatz.

All quotes obtained firsthand unless noted otherwise. All statistics are current as of June 28 and are courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com unless noted otherwise.