Keidel: Knicks', Fans' Obsession With Melo Has Done This Franchise Great Harm
By Jason Keidel
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When I declared that the Knicks were the worst team in NBA history, I got the expected blowback from the orange-and-blue, No. 7 Snuggie flock who will burn their money in the World's Most Overrated Arena no matter how bad the denizens are. If 10-43 doesn't scare you off, no article will.
Maybe my assertion was off, but not by much. And, as always, the Knicks zombie watches every game despite the myriad ways they insult you every night. Indeed, New Yorkers hold all teams to task, except the Knickerbockers.
We roast the Jets, Mets, Nets, Giants -- and even the Yankees -- when they fail to deliver a proper product. But the Knicks have carte blanche to degrade you and the sport they play. You still come, the arena forever freckled with fans and stars, and somehow this wretched facsimile of a basketball team is considered trendy. It is a phenomenon beyond this writer's pay grade. If this were a marriage, you'd be in court, filing for divorce along a wide palate of offenses, from infidelity to downright abuse.
Now we learn that Carmelo Anthony, at once the savior and symbol of the disaster the Knicks have become, is having season-ending surgery. And now we are supposed to not only lament his departure, but laud him for carrying the Knicks as far as they've come.
Only in NYC and MSG would we praise the best player on a 10-43 team. Anthony apologists quickly assert that the team has yet to win a game in his absence. So? Isn't a max-contract player supposed to deliver a few wins? If he's to be credited with their 10 wins, why does he get no blame for their losses?
What have the Knicks done over the last decade to earn your time, trust or cash? Is your income so disposable that you can drop a grand to watch the home team get vaporized by sub-.500 clubs? Lord knows that Manhattan doesn't lack entertainment options. You can spend a fraction of the money and not be humiliated. Or you can be humiliated in a much more agreeable manner, if that's your thing.
You'll notice that no one is rushing to NYC or MSG to play with Anthony. Whenever we summon some dream-team scenario, it never includes Anthony. An NBA player (anonymously) told ESPN this week that when he played with Anthony, he could "eat a waffle" while waiting for the ball, whereas his head had to be "on a swivel" when he shared the court with LeBron James, because King James is royalty for a reason. He shares the ball, makes ballers better and is devoted to the premise that keeping your teammates engaged makes you a better team, and better teams win titles.
Of course, you can decide why Anthony should be paid LBJ money. We so promiscuously toss around terms like "max-contract player" without giving much thought to what it means. This isn't baseball, where you can derive exact value from a guy who bats .350 with a .410 on-base percentage. If he gets on base 40 percent of the time, he will score a lot of runs. So isn't the highest-paid player in basketball capable of carrying a basketball team?
No one is saying that Anthony can't play, or that he can't be a valuable member of a winning team. But, as Chauncey Billups recently said, Melo was never a leader. He never thrived as the alpha male and always prospered when someone else was commanding the court. Indeed, Anthony had his best seasons when he ran with Billups and Jason Kidd, two monolithic leaders who know how to handle someone like Melo.
But as the quarterback of this team, Melo and the Knicks are an epic failure. And while it's easy to point out that Peter Vecsey and yours truly were perhaps the only local writers who publicly and pointedly knocked the Melo trade the day it happened -- and we were resoundingly right -- the more useful approach is to look at the present. What was it about Melo's tenure in New York City that made Knicks management think it was prudent to lavish him with $124 million last year?
The Knicks had one prosperous year with Anthony, when they won 54 games. But they still got bounced long before the NBA Finals. Anthony still hasn't sniffed an NBA Finals, and reached a conference finals just once, in Denver, six years ago.
There's no shame in making a bad move. If you'd care to go all existential, failure is the seed of success. And had the Knicks admitted as much and cut bait once Melo's contract expired, then you could forgive them. But doubling down on a failed relationship is the essence of hubris. Or ignorance.
Omit emotion for a moment and consider the one, irrefutable fact. The Knicks had Anthony for his four prime years and didn't challenge for a championship. And, at 30, he will only get worse. So their answer was to give him roughly $30 million more than any other team was offering.
How does this, in the most glittering fantasy, end with a Larry O'Brien Trophy? He's inhaling at least a third of your salary cap. No one with a ring wants to help him get one. They have a rookie coach and a GM who has won 13 rings, but none as a GM.
If you can just suppress your reflexive need to be right and bark back, you can clearly see that the team and city's obsession with Anthony has done the franchise great harm, just as trading endless picks and prospects to get Melo has. The team was 28-26 when they dealt for Melo, so it's not as if they were leaping from a hardwood inferno. Compare that record to this 10-43 cesspool that barely resembles a professional basketball team. And think what could have been. All the college players they could have drafted. All the free agents they could have signed. All the trades they could have made.
This isn't Melo's fault, per se. Who would sanely reject $124 million? If someone offers you way more than you're worth, you take it. Let them figure out why they gave it to you.
Not even Jackson has doused this dumpster fire. The one man who actually remembers winning in that building doesn't have enough muscle memory to repeat that '70s magic.
I guess Jackson is learning what we've known for a while. You can't go home again, if your home happens to be the World's Most Overrated Arena.
Follow Jason on Twitter @JasonKeidel.