NBA Rumors: Latest Buzz on Carmelo Anthony, Julius Randle, Knicks

What will the New York Knicks' lineup look like for the first game of the 2020-21 season? Potentially much different than the one that took the court for their final game of the 2019-20 campaign.

Changes are sweeping through New York, and they began when the team hired Leon Rose to serve as president in March. Now, the Knicks are conducting a coaching search, and it's likely they'll have a new face on the bench next season (unless interim head coach Mike Miller beats out the other candidates for the position).

The Knicks could also make some trades or free-agent signings to change their roster, and they're going to add a top prospect with their first-round pick in the draft, which is guaranteed to be a top-10 selection and could even be the No. 1 overall pick.

However, one potential upcoming acquisition for New York could be bringing back a familiar face. According to Marc Berman of the New York Post, Carmelo Anthony could be interested in returning to the Knicks for a final stint with the team as he gets closer to the end of his career.

"The sense is Anthony wants to finish his career in New York and he fell right on the Knicks' radar the moment Rose accepted the presidency," Berman recently wrote. "There is no bigger fan of Anthony on the planet than Rose."

Anthony, who is 36 and in his 17th NBA season, is currently playing for the Portland Trail Blazers, and he'll be in action when the 2019-20 season resumes, which is scheduled to happen later this month. Anthony has averaged 15.3 points and 6.3 rebounds over his first 50 games for Portland.

The Knicks acquired Anthony in a trade from the Denver Nuggets in February 2011, and he played in New York through the end of the 2016-17 season. He was an All-Star in each of his six full seasons with the Knicks, with his best showing coming in 2012-13, when he won the NBA scoring title by averaging 28.7 points per game.

If Anthony returns to New York and the team makes some other notable moves, it's possible a player who started this past season could end up moving into a bench role.

Berman wrote that "several scouts are convinced" that Julius Randle's future will be as a "sixth-man scorer on a playoff team." So, perhaps the Knicks' 2020-21 lineup could feature Anthony in the starting lineup and Randle on the bench.

Randle signed with New York last summer, and in his first season with the team, he averaged 19.5 points and 9.7 rebounds in 64 games. The 25-year-old power forward is under contract through the 2021-22 season, so he could be a key player in helping the Knicks turn things around. And he'd certainly be a valuable bench player to have if he moved to that role.