Open Letter to Carmelo Anthony: You're Not Fooling Anyone
Dear Carmelo Anthony,
Your jig is up. It has been for a while. So long, in fact, it's not entirely certain you're trying to fool anyone anymore. If you are, well, you've failed. Spectacularly.
This, of course, is all in reference to your left knee injury, which is now a recurring issue that's being neglected—overlooked in the sense that talk of you shutting it down has yet to result in you actually shutting it down.
Midway through January, you admitted surgery would be your "only option" at some point, per the New York Daily News' Frank Isola. Instead of getting said surgery then, you've waited, you've played.
Strategically placed absences have been sprinkled throughout the New York Knicks' last 13 games, but mostly, you've played. Sometimes you've even played well. But each time you've played, no matter how well or poorly, you've put yourself at risk of further injury.
The question is: Why? And for what?
Look, we get it. You're super valuable to the Knicks—the same Knicks who, at 33 games under .500 and on pace have to the worst record in franchise history, aren't going anywhere special regardless of whether you play.
Still, maybe there's an unremitting sense of loyalty here, that which won't bend or break in the face of serial defeat. The Knicks are 0-13 when you don't play. Their offense when you're not on the floor would rank among the seven-worst ever. Perhaps that pains you in ways none of us keyboard folk can fathom.
In the end, though, you've still only been putting your body on the line for a squad ill-fit to beat Kentucky, let alone dispatch fellow NBA teams on a regular basis. And you've done this at 30 years old, with more than 30,000 minutes on your treads and four years and $101.6 million left on your contract.
Only when you left in the fourth quarter against the Miami Heat on Feb. 9 did it start to feel like you understood the gravity of this situation. Bleacher Report's own Ethan Skolnick said you admitted an indefinite absence was nigh. For a brief, uncharacteristic second, it even seemed like your status for the 2015 All-Star Game was in jeopardy:
Not long after that you brought word of your intent to play in the All-Star tilt, according to ESPN New York's Ian Begley, "even if it's just a few minutes."
In a vacuum, few can blame you. The game is in New York, it's your eighth appearance and this is an opportunity to play with the star teammates your Knicks don't have.
Then again, you're injured, visibly limited and days away from ending your season.
"It's very likely. It's very likely," you said during an interview on ESPN Radio (per Begley). "Now I've got to start thinking about the future. This season is this season. So I really want to just sit down with my team and sit down with the proper people to just kind of plan this thing out and see exactly what I have to do to get done and just to fix it."
After the All-Star exhibition. Not before it. Shutting it down before the All-Star Game—say, like, anytime over the last six weeks—would have been safe. You, Carmelo Anthony, have no time to play it safe apparently. You need to partake in the one game this season that means less than any Knicks games.
It's a typical move for someone so conscious of his brand—an individual concern that reached its zenith in Eli Saslow's piece for ESPN The Magazine, wherein you riffed about the importance of having a "bulletproof" legacy that outlived your basketball career.
Putting that brand before your team is selfish. There's no point playing in the All-Star Game. You'll come in, chuck some threes, yuck it up with LeBron James and friends and then return to reality, having successfully postponed the end to an utterly pointless season.
Kudos for having done that, even though it's been abundantly apparent the Knicks never once wanted you to, per The Wall Street Journal's Chris Herring:
"Asked Fish if there's a point where it makes more sense to shut Melo down. "Weve expressed our opinions to Carmelo" but ultimately up to him
— Chris Herring (@HerringWSJ) December 29, 2014"
Knowing the Knicks have been in favor of you shutting it down makes this whole All-Star fiasco that much harder to accept. You're not playing for a postseason berth, nor are you playing for fear of your team's disapproval. You're playing for you, all while failing to acknowledge the big picture.
You say it's time to "start thinking about the future," when really, that time has passed. The big picture became more important than any imminent portrait the moment you eschewed a multitude of contenders in free agency to remain with the Knicks.
Staying in New York was and remains the smart business decision. The Knicks could offer more money than any other team, and New York's market is perfect for superstars wishing to inflate their influence.
But re-signing with the Knicks was not the smart basketball decision. You put your legacy in the hands of Phil Jackson, a rookie executive, and a team with expensive taste, but a culture cheapened by four decades of championship-less notoriety.
One of the few things the Knicks have going for them is cap space. If they play their cards right and find takers for Jose Calderon's and Pablo Prigioni's deals, they'll have upward of $30 million in spending power this summer.
No one name will be out of range. Marc Gasol, Paul Millsap, Wesley Matthews and DeAndre Jordan among other stars will all be available. Your Knicks will have the flexibility to sign any one—perhaps even two—of them.
Kevin Durant's foray into 2016 free agency looms equally large. With the salary cap expected to explode, your Knicks have the financial means to make a splash this summer and remain in play for his services one year later.
Indeed, this all sounds strikingly similar to 2010, when the Knicks tied their future to cap space and came out the other end worse for wear, bad contracts in hand. This time is supposed to be different, though.
The Knicks have you, a superstar. They didn't have that incumbent star back then, rendering you a pivotal part of the plan—an arrangement you have jeopardized time and again by continuing to play, as Bleacher Report's Grant Hughes previously explained:
"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.
"
Prioritizing now over later luckily didn't result in disaster. Nothing out of the ordinary happened while you had both eyes on the All-Star festivities. It's beyond unlikely anything else goes wrong Sunday, when you take the floor surrounded by the peers you're so obviously hellbent on playing with.
To be fair, you haven't attempted to mask your excitement for this game either. As you told the New York Post's Howie Kussoy:
"Even when I was in Denver, I would think about it and I thought the All-Star Game is never gonna be in New York, so this is a big dream come true for me. It’s the mecca of basketball. Watching Michael Jordan and that All-Star Game in ’98 and seeing how big it was, to come back years later, for me to be that kid who was once dreaming about it to being the host of it.
This is home. This is my home. For me to represent that and have a homegrown native being an ambassador and face of a historic event, I can’t put that into words.
"
There's nothing remotely wrong about those feelings. Even if this was just about shining some light unto a dark season, it would be impossible not to see the merits in your reasoning.
It's just that your obligations to the Knicks and your long-term health supersede any of those feelings, however well-intentioned or genuine. Any significant decisions should be made with that in mind.
This entire situation, from the moment sitting out became inevitable, has failed to adequately account for those responsibilities.
Playing through this injury wasn't about the Knicks or making a point that proves you're no quitter. It was about those fleeting seconds you'll spend on the court, your court, representing the Knicks on a stage that only succeeds in serving fan fantasy and player ego and betraying the bigger picture you're supposed to be looking at.
For your sake, hopefully those few moments of irrelevant basketball are everything you want them to be.
Respectfully Yours,
Those Not Sold
*Stats courtesy of Basketball-Reference. Salary information via HoopsHype.
.jpg?w=600 "Colts Release Kenny Moore")
