Carmelo Officially Picks New York
Carmelo told the Rockets and Bulls to go find new prom dates, he’s sticking around with the Knicks. Negotiating a bazillion dollar contract. You know its pretty funny – Carmelo broke the news that he’s picking New York over Chicago and both Big Cat and my reaction was “Well, shit.” Its like a little bit of a “one mans trash is another man’s treasure situation.”
Now to be clear, trash is not the right word. Obviously Carmelo Anthony is certainly not trash. He’s an incredibly elite scorer. Not many people in this league can do what he does, if anybody at all. But Bulls fans were salivating over the thought of adding Carmelo where a contingency of Knicks fans have seen that even Carmelo at his best doesn’t seem to be enough to take you to the Promised Land. Yet then at the same time, I think to myself – I’m worrying about a fucking championship? Take a look at the Knicks the past 15 years and lets be realistic. Simply contending in the east as a playoff team would be a welcome change from where this franchise has been the last decade plus. Sure, at $130 million, you expect Carmelo to be the type of guy that could almost carry a team to the Finals himself, a la Lebron during his original stint in Cleveland. Carmelo couldn’t even carry at team to the 8 seed in the hopeless East this year. Yet then again, thats not a fair comparison. Just because he’s not Lebron or Durant doesn’t mean he’s not a very valuable blue chip star in this league.
As you can see, I LoDuca myself left and right when thinking about Melo. I go back and forth. Wake up feeling one way, change my mind at lunch, and come full circle by dinner. One day I convince myself the East is wide open and the next I decide that Carmelo is just going to put us in limbo for another 5 years. It all really depends on your expectations and your belief in Phil Jackson and the Knicks.
Over the past couple weeks I’ve been hunting for apartments in Manhattan. Just having brokers show me piece of shit spots for way too much money and thats when I realized – apartments in NYC are like signing Carmelo: its way too expensive, and you don’t get exactly what you want or need, but whats the alternative? The reality of the situation is theres only a few good options on the market, and if you want one, you gotta pay. I just keep telling myself that Phil Jackson – at his age and his situation with his health – has gotta have a plan to acquire some major talent in the short term to surround Carmelo in order to contend with Lebron and the revitalized Cavs. Their draft pick situation isn’t great – but its not the nightmare it once was. The worst of their mortgage-the-future trades are over. The next couple years has them swapping certain picks with the Nuggets and the Raptors, but they’re not pick-less like in year’s past. And most importantly they’ve got a ton of money coming off the books with a highly motivated, highly respected president who, I’m assuming, has the desire to win now. Hopefully not at the expense of years to come, as previous regimes have done, but Phil will make the moves to surround Melo in the next few years. Will it ever be enough to top Lebron? Who knows. Tall task. Frank Isola compared it to the 90s again where they’ll always be trying to conquer Jordan and the Bulls – I’d say that would be delightful compared to the 2000s.