Carmelo Anthony Moves to Power Forward, But to What End?

It's become too much of a trend to write it off as mere coincidence: Carmelo Anthony is now nine games into his stint as the starting power forward for the New York Knicks, and is playing far and away his best basketball of the season. 

Between Anthony's play on both ends, a Knicks team still figuring out how to operate without Jeremy Lin, sample size limitations, changes to the rest of New York's rotation, Mike Woodson's infant tenure as head coach and Stoudemire's absence, there's a lot to unpack. But even while untangling all of those factors we can still say with relative certainty that there are genuine payoffs to playing small with Anthony as the nominal 4, for reasons that have nothing to do with his playing style and everything to do with the changes and concessions opponents are forced to make as a result.

Although Anthony has undergone a designated shift from small forward to power forward, his offensive style is still very much the same. He's still an effective shot creator, a good post-up threat and perhaps a bit too willing to turn to his pull-up jumper—all relatively surefire signs that Melo is still Melo, on top of the fact that he still operates from familiar on-court real estate.

Nothing that he's done of late is necessarily related to some position-specific mandate, and yet we've seen Anthony's per-minute scoring and shooting percentages skyrocket upon his transition to a new role. Over the last 10 games, Anthony has averaged 31.7 points per 36 minutes on 50-percent shooting from the field—marks that could easily have erased much of the Knicks' offensive woes this season if they replaced Anthony's distressing season-long numbers.

That Anthony is only playing within himself and his comfort zones aren't as encouraging to Knicks fans as it hypothetically could be; while New York's recent success and Anthony's notable production do at least stem in part from Anthony purely playing better basketball (what a difference converting shots makes), it's hard to extricate his recent triumphs from the notable absence of Stoudemire. Anthony wouldn't be a "power forward" in the first place if not for Stoudemire's nagging back injuries. Although the switch has allowed Anthony to share the floor with different kinds of players, it's worth revisiting whether Anthony and a healthy Stoudemire are capable of generating efficient offense together this season.

After all, if Anthony had legitimately changed his game in order to spark his recent tear, the Knicks would simply lean on this stylistic shift after Stoudemire's return. But that Anthony and the Knicks' offense has seemed to play better merely due to lineup orientation alone is legitimately troubling.

Some of New York's efficacy has stemmed from the mismatches created by Anthony's altered position and the utility of having another shooter on the court, but neither is possible going forward barring a self-defeating decision to feature Anthony and Stoudemire as a power forward-center tandem. Considering how deeply flawed both players are as help defenders, would offensive experimentation justify disarming the greater crux of the Knick's overall success?

Although the success and failure of the different pillars of New York's offense has created an inextinguishable ruckus this season, defense has long been the most powerful justification for this team's hopes. Tyson Chandler has transformed this Knicks roster in a way that almost defies comprehension, and though his perfectly vertical contests at the rim and timely rotations don't make for good headline fodder, the Knicks—as currently constructed—are a team that wins with defense and passable contributions on offense.

That's particularly true for a team without Jeremy Lin, and even more so for a team without the basis to hope for a fully healthy Stoudemire. Like it or not, these Knicks will again be operating in deficit on offense as they march toward the postseason. Although Chandler, Iman Shumpert and subtle shades of defensive improvement across the roster certainly give this year's Knicks a better chance than last year's model, scoring efficiently seems to nonetheless be their most glaring limitation.

Offense always matters, even for the most defensively focused teams, but fretting too much over the shot distributions and positional designations of an injured team manages to sidestep the core of the Knicks' play almost entirely. There's simply not enough time to expect Anthony and Stoudemire to fully gel after Amar'e's eventual return, nor is there enough magic to expect Stoudemire's back to be healed to a point capable of high effectiveness.

New York will be scraping together whatever points they can in a potential playoff series regardless of what position Carmelo Anthony plays or how his style meshes with any of his teammates, to the point where any dim hope for postseason glory seems to emanate from Chandler's perpetual motor.

Of course, none of that resolves the fact that, if only technically speaking, Mike Woodson will inevitably have some decisions to make regarding the nature of his lineups and the utilization of Anthony and Stoudemire.

But the most likely—and most reasonable—answers for the Knicks likely won't be controversial or sexy in any way. Woodson will surely try to find time to go small when Stoudemire goes to the bench. Anthony will slide between forward positions without ever really changing his game. New York will struggle offensively, and while incompatibilities, egos and shot-hunting will dominate the narrative, the truth is that these Knicks are simply a team in a state of unenviable flux.

Their staccato season never gave them much of a chance to settle in with one version of their roster or another, and the nature of their many injuries never allowed for stable on-court chemistry nor any sense of closure. Such is life in the NBA, and though Melo's better days may indeed be linked to a structural shift, his recent change remains a short-term solution to what ultimately are long-term problems. The Knicks' offense isn't remediable in a form that would create any wildly different ending for their current season no matter how many times Anthony drops 30 points as a power forward.

The Knicks need to get healthy. They need to structure an offense capable of facilitating the play of both Anthony and Stoudemire. They need the benefit of a standard practice schedule and a full season, and they need the freedom to learn and grow over the course of a complete campaign.

They will need ingenuity and they may even come to need positional shifts, but what New York needs more than anything is time. It's a rarity in this season even more so than others, and it's the nature of that scarcity that could potentially yield greater returns for a team that otherwise seems to be fatally flawed.