Carmelo Anthony is just saying what we’re all thinking.
Most know that as bad as the New York Knicks are, they won’t be rebuilding through conventional methods. Sure, they’ll welcome in Jahlil Okafor with open arms should they land the No. 1 overall pick. But this team is not about to wait around and let draft picks develop year by year.
For one, they don’t have tons of draft picks. They own this year’s first-rounder, but not next year’s. They’re also thin on the trade assets that could land them first-rounders. So, rebuilding via the draft really wouldn’t be an option until the end of the 2016-17 season. And, yeah, that’s not going to happen.
Phil Jackson doesn’t have that kind of time. I’m not just saying he’s up there in age, though he is. Rather, he has a 30-year-old Carmelo Anthony to think about. Melo will turn 31 this May, at which point his window of dominance will be dwindling. By the time his contract expires in 2019, he won’t be the same player. The Knicks will be lucky if he’s close to the same player. The way he plays is physically demanding and brutal. It takes a toll. He needs another superstar or two to offset the offensive grind—the kind of players who allow him to be a frequent spot-up shooter. That type of game ages well.
But Jackson and the Knicks know all this. They didn’t hand Melo $124 million this past summer thinking otherwise. That’s why after the Knicks’ latest win over the Los Angeles Lakers, Melo and head coach Derek Fisher were left stressing urgency with regard to the team’s rebuild, indirectly implying that free agency will still matter a great deal.
From ESPN New York’s Ian Begley:
“I think we owe it to Carmelo to do it the right way,” Fisher said before the Knicks’ win over the Los Angeles Lakers. “He just signed a contract for five years, he’s 30 years old. We don’t have 10 years to figure this out. So, for us, we’re right in the middle of, ‘We need to do some things right away, as soon as we can.’ But at the same time, not necessarily put ourselves in the same position we’ve been in the last few years where we try to get a get a bunch of guys that don’t have favorable contracts that don’t allow you to plan for the future.”
“The time is now,” Anthony said Sunday after scoring 31 points to lead New York over Los Angeles. “The time is now to kind of start building for the future. I don’t think we can wait. Not just for my sake, just in general, I think the time is now. The window is now. I think we’ve got to take advantage of that.” …
“I understand our fans and the city wanting to hurry up and get to a championship,” Fisher said. “We obviously want to win. That’s what we’ve done in our past. [But] we still have to be smart.”
Smart as in rebuild quickly, not reflexively. The last time the Knicks had this kind of cap space, they spent it on Amar’e Stoudemire. They cannot settle in similar fashion. If they cannot land a superstar, they’ll need to regroup, preserve cap space and come back just as flexible in 2016.
That’s the hand they’ve dealt themselves. This next rebuild is delicate, because of Anthony. They’ll need to traverse this path carefully, making shrewd decisions and, on many levels, hoping their market mystique appeals to the players they need. Otherwise, they’ll be left lamenting another rebuild gone astray while Anthony himself is forced to wonder if he should accept a trade to a team that can offer him the opportunity New York cannot.
