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jcmacri · 8 years ago

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Carmelo Anthony, the Petulant Child Who Must Go

by Jonathan Macri

Carmelo Anthony is not getting traded to the Cavaliers for Kevin Love. Even LeBron James is smart enough to see how Anthony's talents would be duplicitous on the Cavs, who need more play making, not less.

However, the news is a sign that, for the first time, something legitimate may be brewing on the Anthony trade front. The Cavs, no doubt, were the first team on Carmelo's wish list, and their predictable turn-down of a star for star swap is merely the first domino to fall. The idea is now firmly planted in the head of the Knicks mercurial forward that he may just be better off taking his talents elsewhere, and the longer this goes on, the more teams he is likely to consider. He will begin to think that he is the missing piece of a championship roster in more and more cities. Knicks fans can only hope that the organization does not hold an equally emboldened view of his value.

The necessity for the Knicks to trade Carmelo Anthony has nothing at this point to do with getting a young asset or draft picks back in return. It's not about improving the team's talent level, now or in the future. It's not about shedding his salary for next year, and it's not about giving the keys to the offense over to Kristaps Porzingis.

All of those things are nice secondary benefits, but none of them are the primary reason why the Knicks need to do everything in their power to convince their enigmatic star - finally - that his future plans might best be made outside of the metropolitan area.

For the main reason, an example: Imagine a seventh grade classroom with a particularly frustrating student. He is very smart, but not as smart as he thinks he is, and although he has a broader knowledge base than all of the other students in the class, his opinion of himself and those around him combine to prevent any self-growth. The worst part of having this student in the room is that it is almost impossible to have a class discussion or engage in productive group work with him there. Instead of listening to others and building on what they say to further everyone's learning, he puts down the thoughts of others because he believes he has a better answer - the best answer, and the only right answer. He will occasionally follow the only major class rule of raising his hand and not calling out, but when he does not get called on immediately, he will either make offhanded comments in response to what other students say or simply shut down and begin muttering under his breath. He constantly gets into arguments with other students as a result of this, but it is never his fault, as there is always an offending student who's lack of intelligence renders he or she unfit to partake in any conversation with this student. He has rarely shown any respect for the betterment of the class as a whole, except for when it happens to intersect with the one thing he is concerned about above all else: his own grades. He claims, time and again, that he wants to be taught, but refuses to hear his teachers when they attempt to explain to him that his learning will happen as part of the whole, and that until he respects the classroom as a unit, he will never be happy in this class. There has been discussion about moving the student to other classes, but he only wishes to go to the highest level classes with other equally intelligent students, and the teachers of those sections don't want anything to do with the him. Every other student respects the boy's intelligence, but no one enjoys being in the same class as him due to his antics, and many follow his example of calling out and being generally disagreeable. He refuses to see anyone's viewpoint as correct other than his own, and the worse things get, he only becomes more steeped in his own positions. Thus, he is left to sit and brood and pout and disrupt the progress of the class as only he can.

If this student were moved to a different class, the intelligence quotient of the remaining group of kids would go down by a considerable margin. The class would have lost its brightest student...and yet, the collective intelligence of the group would eventually go up, because learning that is unable to take place right now would begin to become a reality.

Simply put: If I, as his teacher, were able to ship him out and get nothing in return, I would do it in a heartbeat, because it would be a clear case of addition by subtraction.

Such is the case with the Knicks and Anthony. While it is slightly unfair to compare Carmelo with the petulant child described above without also mentioning a number of fellow NBA headliners, he is at present the most glaring example. It is one thing for a thirteen year old to fail to see the error of his ways, but how is it that a grown man can fail to see what is so painfully obvious to everyone around him? That question is difficult to answer, although it is interesting that the current crop of NBA stars fall into one of two categories: those that were touted as potential future Hall of Famers before they ever scored a basket in the pros (Melo, LeBron, Dwight, Blake, and Boogie, to name a few), and those who had to work from the ground up to even have a shot at the league (Kawai, Steph, and Jimmy Butler come to mind). There are also the foreign players who, despite being NBA royalty, act nothing like many of their contemporaries (think Dirk, the Gasol brother, and yes, Timmy). The commonality is this: in America, we have a tendency, especially in the deservingly derided culture of AAU youth basketball, to dote on our clearly gifted youngsters to the point where they quite literally believe they can do no wrong. Carmelo has been living in this world for as long as he can remember.

Knicks fans have seen first-hand over the past six seasons how this type of thinking plays out. When he first came here, he never once considered adjusting his game to fit the style of his coach, despite the fact that the spread pick and roll system netted Mike D'Antoni's Suns teams some modicum of success. The Knicks floundered until Carmelo got hurt and D'Antoni turned to an undrafted point guard from Harvard out of necessity. Back playing his system, the Knicks thrived. Yet, Melo only deepened his line in the sand, refused to adjust his game, and unsurprisingly scoffed at sharing the spotlight. D'Antoni quit rather than deal with his nonsense any longer, and Lin was gone soon after. The following season, when the Knicks signed Jason Kidd to take the leadership reigns from Anthony, the Knicks thrived, as players in the locker room had an actual adult showing them by example what was required to play winning basketball. Kidd retires, and the Knicks fall off a cliff. Carmelo never again consented to playing the four full time, even though it was painfully apparent that it was the position which would ensure his team the greatest level of success. His effort level on defense continued to wane. He justified this to himself by pointing to the offensive load he takes, which is the pinnacle of irony. Unlike other stars across the league who's teams' offenses flow through them on every possession, Carmelo is dreadfully inefficient when he isn't passing and he makes nobody better in the process. This, in turn, begs the obvious and painful question at the heart of the Knicks struggles: why on earth would an Anthony teammate expend full energy on defense when their star never does and that same star doesn't make an effort to get anyone else involved on offense?

We're seeing the answer play out on a nightly basis this season. Defense - which is a byproduct of effort first, second & third and talent fourth (just ask Kevin Love) - has been been nonexistent. In addition to giving up an open three point shot or a drive into the lane on seemingly every possession, the ball and player movement that characterizes the offenses of all of the league's best teams is nowhere to be found when Anthony is on the floor. Earlier this year, and at times in years past, Anthony shows glimpses of becoming a more willing passer, but the moment the team meets adversity (including during the home stretch of close games), he reverts back to his ways, thinking he needs to shoulder the extra load to give the team its best chance at success. To this day, he still fails to realize that his forays into hero ball have the opposite effect.

As a result, most Knicks games have become unwatchable to the basketball purist. A great player is supposed to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts, and yet Anthony has the opposite effect. Granted, this is with more than a little help from Rose, a player who is nothing if not confident. The fantasy that he is still an MVP caliber player is made only more frustrating by Anthony's consistently feeding into it.

On defense, Carmelo is as grabby a player as there is in the league, and every Knicks fan has seen far too many instances of Carmelo jumping out towards a three point shooter about 2 seconds too late. The Knicks are as sure a bet as there is in the league to give up 30 in the first quarter and 60 in a half. It's embarrassing, plain and simple, and there is no longer any viable excuse.

Knicks fans hoping for a haul of equal talent or value need to finally embrace the truly cancerous effect that Carmelo Anthony has had on this franchise for far too long. He is a better version of JR Smith: a player who can be of incredible value to less than a handful of teams in the league, but who would bring more harm than good to the rest. Knicks fans just need to hope that one of those teams - or a team that believes they are among that group - is willing to take their calls and that Anthony is a willing participant in the transaction. Whatever they get back will be icing on a cake that, for the first time in a very long time, actually has a chance to rise.

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