New York Knicks' Future Rides on Shutting Down Carmelo Anthony Now
The New York Knicks' 2014-15 season is already a lost cause, but their present struggles don't have to compromise the franchise's future.
They might, though, if the Knicks keep handling Carmelo Anthony's persistent knee pain the same way.
Carmelo left in the second quarter of a 101-79 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers on Dec. 28 after tweaking the same left knee that has bothered him for most of the season. You can see him wince after finishing a drive here:
Remarkably, Melo has missed only four games all year, despite a combination of back and knee issues. Instead of coddling him through the pain, the Knicks have been working him hard:
The trouble here may be that the decision to lean so heavily on a worn-down Anthony isn't the Knicks' to make. It should be, but indications are that Melo himself is the one calling the shots.
Per Ian Begley of ESPNNewYork.com, Knicks head coach Derek Fisher explained:
"Carmelo is Carmelo. We don't necessarily make decisions for him. He's part of the conversation. So we have opinions that we've expressed to him. We talk about different things, but really it is a decision that he has to also want to make for himself and his career. He's also conferenced about the team and his teammates, and so we'll continue to find a right balance of it all.
"
If the Knicks care about their future, they'll toss the "right balance" (whatever that is) out the window and tell Anthony what the plan is from now on. It'd be a simple set of marching orders to relay: Carmelo should sit out until he's perfectly healthy. And if that means missing a week, a month or the entire season, so be it.
Fisher's comments after the Portland game indicated Anthony was mostly in charge of his availability, but it's encouraging that the coach was the one who called the decisive shot when Anthony was in the locker room at halftime against the Blazers.
"He told me don't even try," Anthony said of Fisher's halftime directive, per Marc Berman of the New York Post. "It's not even worth it. Just sit out and get treatment I need for today and focus on these next couple of days."
That's good, coming from Fisher, Phil Jackson's disciple and hand-picked head coach. It would be even better coming explicitly from the Zen Master himself.
Yahoo Sports' Kelly Dwyer explains why the Knicks need to use this situation as a way to reinforce the organizational hierarchy Jackson's reign was supposed to create:
"The days of things being up to Carmelo Anthony should be over. This was the change that was supposed to take place when Phil Jackson came to town, a move away from the Carmelo-obsessed machinations that drove James Dolan to override his respected former general manager in Donnie Walsh in dealing for Anthony just because Carmelo wanted to get a big contract before the lockout hit. This sort of star-powered nonsense was supposed to hit the bricks when Phil Jackson and Clarence Gaines Jr.—who rightfully are paying as much attention to 2017 as they are the last days of 2014—came into town to clean shop.
"
The Knicks are on a road to nowhere this season—five wins through 33 games, losers of 18 of their last 19 and featuring a defense that is flat-out horrendous. The best this bunch could hope for is a miracle playoff run on Anthony's back coinciding with the complete collapse of the teams ahead of them in the East (which is all of them), a feat that would result in near certain first-round destruction.
Actually, that's not the best the Knicks could hope for, which is the whole point.
The real best would be bottoming out, bolstering their lottery odds and getting Melo healthy enough to be an attractant for free agents in New York's Summer Revitalization Tour: 2015.
The Knicks will shed Amar'e Stoudemire's and Andrea Bargnani's contracts when the season concludes, opening up space to pursue a couple of high-value assets to slot alongside Anthony. Said assets might not find New York such an attractive place if Carmelo is surrounded by physical question marks because he beat himself up in a meaningless campaign.
We've seen something similar play out with the Los Angeles Lakers, who've had issues signing supporting talent for Kobe Bryant, in part because of his uncertain health during the past two summers. Even if Melo doesn't have Kobe's rep as a soul-crusher, he's not exactly everyone's dream teammate either. Toss in the hypothetical perception that his body is breaking down, and you've got a real issue.
The Knicks have been shackled by awful contracts for what seems like forever, and hope for the future is tied strongly to what the team will do upon being financially liberated. If all that cap space goes to waste or isn't spent on players who'll make a real difference, well...it's hard to think of anything more disappointing.
Melo needs to be the franchise showpiece this summer—far more than he needs to be its on-court leader right now.
It's easy to understand why he wants to play through the pain. Anthony returned to New York last summer for more money and the lifestyle to which he'd grown accustomed, eschewing the chance to win elsewhere. Sitting out now would make it look like he got his cash and quit. Inaccurate and unfair as that characterization might be, it would dent Anthony's beloved brand.
There are also the fans to consider—the ones buying tickets because they want to watch Anthony play. Don't they deserve to get their money's worth?
Maybe, but it feels insulting to New York fans to assume they can't see the bigger picture, that they don't care about building sustainable success. You'd like to think that any real Knicks fan would appreciate the sense in thinking ahead rather than running Anthony into the ground now for the occasional, meaningless victory.
Past Knicks regimes would have let Anthony do whatever he wanted, make all of his own decisions and run himself ragged—especially if it made winning now more likely. When you get right down to it, that should be the deciding factor.
The fact that the Knicks of the past would have let Melo keep playing is the best argument that the Knicks of the present should stop him.
The organization's future depends on it.
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