Amar’e Stoudemire, even now, as a member of the Miami Heat, thinks that he and Carmelo Anthony could have made sweet basketball music together with the New York Knicks.
You know, if it weren’t for those meddling coaches.
Prior to the Knicks’ 95-78 loss to the Heat on Monday night, Stoudemire reflected on his time in New York. In addition to hinting at what his arrival did for the city’s economy and looking back fondly on the time he spent there off the court, he also lamented what could have been between and Anthony.
Per Newsday‘s Al Iannazzone:
“I don’t think that pick-and-roll offense between me and Melo was taken advantage of,” Stoudemire said. “The way he shoots the ball and handles the ball from the outside and the way I attack the rim, it could have been a pretty good combination. I don’t think the coaching staff at the time really bought into that. It wasn’t up to Melo and I. It was up to the coaching staff to figure that part out.”
Part of this is fair.
The Knicks never ran enough pick-and-rolls between Anthony and Stoudemire, not during their brief time together under Mike D’Antoni, who tried his damnedest to turn Melo into a point forward.
To throw all the blame on the coaches, though, is pretty freaking ludicrous.
Stoudemire can throw shade at Mike Woodson all he wants. His offensive sets were uninventive, and he lived in a world where small ball wasn’t effective—even when it was effective for the Knicks. D’Antoni is another story. The Knicks never bought into his offensive system with Melo in the fold, and that makes it difficult to place too much of the onus on him. Had Melo been more accepting of his role as a facilitator, much like he is now, things might have been different, not only for STAT and Melo, but for D’Antoni and the entire Knicks team.
Nevertheless, on some level, this comes back to just Melo and STAT. They were never a good fit alongside each other, both of them defensive liabilities who valued having the ball in their hands. Just as much as it was on the coaching staff to game plan around their skills, it was on Melo and STAT to mold their games together, for one another, in the name of chemical balance.
Neither of them, not even the notoriously team-first STAT, did enough adapting. Throw Stoudemire’s topsy-turvy availably on top of that stubbornness or ignorance or whatever you want to call it, and you have what the Melo-STAT partnership will always be: a colossal failure.
