Pressure for NY Knicks Championship Is on Organization Now, Not Carmelo Anthony
The New York Knicks may be retooling at the moment, but with Carmelo Anthony back for the foreseeable future and team president Phil Jackson running the organization, they expect to be a title contender sooner rather than later.
While that may seem unrealistic after a 37-45 season, the Knicks will have a lot of cap space in 2015, and with some smart moves, they absolutely have the ammunition to build a quality roster over the next couple of years.
They already have their superstar in Anthony—and make no mistake, you'd be hard-pressed to list 10 better players in the NBA—and the onus is now on the organization to build around him.
While fans and experts alike may have previously subscribed to the theory that Melo chose money over championships when he re-signed with New York, the NBA's reported $2 billion-plus TV deal, per John Lombardo and John Ourand of Sports Business Journal, and the resulting cap increase in two years all but cancels that argument out.
Dan Feldman of NBC Sports has predicted that, based on revenue expectations, the cap could be as high as $87 million in 2017 (the first year of the new TV deal), a huge jump on 2015's $63 million.
All of a sudden, the Knicks will not only have cap space for the 2015-16 season when Amar'e Stoudemire and Andrea Bargnani come off the books, but they could potentially stay under the cap for 2016-17, depending on just how much it increases.
This TV deal could be huge for New York. Along with the alleged cap increase, the Knicks got away with giving Melo this year's max instead of an increased max deal in 2016 had he opted for a two-year contract a la LeBron James with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
There are no excuses anymore. The Knicks will be in play for the likes of Rajon Rondo, Marc Gasol and Paul Millsap in 2015 and potentially Kevin Durant, Dwight Howard and Deron Williams in 2016, to name but a few. And there's more than enough supplementary talent out there that they should be able to put together a well-rounded squad if they spend wisely, even if they miss out on the big names.
The draft is also going to be of the utmost importance. Surprisingly, the Knicks are currently scheduled to have their first-rounder in every draft besides 2016, and continuing to pick up players like Iman Shumpert and Tim Hardaway Jr. will go a long way to getting the franchise where it needs to be.
Melo is playing his part. He took the five-year deal instead of asking for a two-year deal and has lost weight this offseason to prolong his career and prepare for his role in the triangle offense. He also continues to improve as a player, recording a career-high in rebounds last season (8.3 per game), showing more on the defensive end and now working on ball movement under Jackson and head coach Derek Fisher.
There is still debate as to whether Anthony is good enough to be the best player on a championship team, but the fact of the matter is that we won't know until he has a quality supporting cast around him—something he frankly hasn't had at any point in his career.
The best team Anthony has ever played on was the 2009 Denver Nuggets, when he was supported by Chauncey Billups, Kenyon Martin and Nene. They would eventually fall in the Western Conference Finals and didn't really stand a chance against the likes of the Los Angeles Lakers and the San Antonio Spurs. This wasn't so much because Melo wasn't as good as Kobe Bryant or Tim Duncan (although that is true); rather, it was because he didn't have a Pau Gasol or a Tony Parker alongside him.
New York's own narrative has been similar for the last four decades. It has had teams led by great players—namely, the Patrick Ewing-led Knicks in the '90s—but ultimately ended up falling short without enough help elsewhere on the roster.
This isn't to say that Melo doesn't have a role to play in bringing a title to New York; he is the team's centerpiece and, as such, is obviously going to have to be at an elite level for the Knicks to succeed. He has issues of his own to work on, but the point is that now he's under contract and officially committed to the franchise. The next big step will be for Jackson and company to convert their cap flexibility into a legit supporting cast.
Time will tell if the Knicks can build a contender and Melo is indeed the right player to build around, but there's certainly reason for optimism in New York. For once, they appear to have a plan for the future and one of the most successful men in league history executing it.
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