Don't blame Melo, New York -- blame yourselves.
You were the ones who built him up, not him. Since coming to New York, all he's done is exactly what he did in Denver. He scores in the mid-20s with middling efficiency, plays token defense, and helps on the boards. That's what he is. There is nothing disappointing or upsetting about it at all, except to the people who built him up as an antidote to LeBron James and Kobe Bryant.
All that stuff about his being a top-10 player, a superstar? Could we maybe try to get some evidence first? Let's start with the digits. Anthony's stats fully state, if not overstate, his value -- there's no hidden defensive value or other warm/fuzzy stuff to explore here. Nonetheless, he has never finished in the top 10 in the league in player efficiency rating. Not once. In 2009-10 he posted a career high in PER, and it placed him 13th, right in front of former Knicks immortal David Lee.
Giving up an arm and a leg for such a player never made sense, and we're seeing the results now. The Knicks were basically an average team before the Anthony trade -- 28-26, with an average scoring margin at almost exactly break-even (just 0.4 points per game on the plus side).
And after the Carmelo Anthony trade, they're still basically an average team. While the worst is over after the Knicks and three striped-shirted friends managed to beat Orlando on Monday to end a six-game losing streak, the big picture hasn't changed. Since the trade, New York is 8-12 with a plus-1 scoring margin, and it's come against a very representative schedule -- 10 home games and 10 road games, 10 winning teams and 10 losing teams. Fittingly, today's playoff odds project the Knicks to finish at a perfectly average 41-41.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. The Knicks heralded Anthony's arrival as their launchpad to contender status, bringing in a second star to pair with Amare Stoudemire. But a number of factors since have contributed to their disappointing record.
As I noted above, it doesn't appear Anthony has been the problem. He's putting up the same numbers he did in Denver, more or less, and has rediscovered the 3-point shot after essentially abandoning it over the first 50 games. His rebounds are down, but overall his PER as a Knick is virtually identical to his pretrade mark as a Nugget.
Instead, it's the other positions where New York has suffered. For starters, Stoudemire isn't playing like he did before the trade. In the 20 games with Anthony, he's averaging two points per game fewer while playing more minutes; he's also shooting a lower percentage, rebounding less and has had a glaring decline in blocked shots -- from 2.2 to 1.2 per game.
While Melo and Amare aren't great complements offensively, I'm not saying Stoudemire's recent decline can be pinned on Anthony. Stoudemire has complained of fatigue lately, after a heavy workload on his surgically repaired knees in the first half of the season, and to me he's looked dead-legged on several occasions. One example that stuck in my mind was the very first play of the Milwaukee game last week, when Stoudemire caught the ball near the baseline and went for one of his patented dives to the basket. But instead of dunking, he barely got to rim level and tried to lay it in; Andrew Bogut flicked it aside easily.
There are other, secondary issues involving other players that are unrelated to the Melo trade as well. Most notably, Landry Fields' game has deserted him of late and he was recently replaced in the starting lineup. Also, the Knicks' bizarre insistence on getting Jared Jeffries and his 29.9 percent shooting into the lineup has been a drag on their offensive numbers.
And then there's the defense. Anthony has never been renowned as a defensive stopper, but the player he replaced (Danilo Gallinari) wasn't exactly vying for all-defense honors, either. Nonetheless, New York's defensive efficiency has plummeted to 108.9 since the trade, which is very nearly the worst mark in the league -- even though five of the Bockers' 20 games after the trade came against the league's two worst offensive teams, Cleveland and Milwaukee.
Of course, it wasn't just Anthony who was replaced, and that's where we get to the real problem with New York. They'll play a little better than they are now if Stoudemire regains his legs and Fields recovers, but not dramatically so.
Unfortunately, to really use the Melo trade as a pole vault to contending, the Knicks need Wilson Chandler and Raymond Felton.
Oops.
Felton's ability to stop the ball at the point of attack stands in stark contrast to Chauncey Billups' glaring inability to do so, while Chandler's mobility and ability to cover two positions similarly made up for some of New York's other defensive shortcomings. It's no accident that the Nuggets' defense has improved dramatically since the trade; while there are other factors, too, adding those two in place of Billups and Anthony has been a huge plus.
Of course, Felton and Chandler -- along with Gallinari and a whole crate full of other goodies -- were sent out to acquire Anthony. They had to lose Chandler to acquire Anthony, and that swap on its own would have engendered a fairly massive improvement for the Knicks.
But this is where we get to the same vicious cycle that has plagued the Knicks throughout James Dolan's ownership. Ultimately, this is a franchise that cares a lot more about winning news conferences than it does about patiently building a winner, a wicked undercurrent that even Donnie Walsh was powerless to stop.
So Dolan wanted to get Anthony regardless of the cost, and that they did. Along the way they convinced themselves Melo was a top-10 player when there isn't a shred of evidence to support that contention. Basically, it was the Herschel Walker trade, but for basketball. If this trade ends up building a contender, it will be in Denver, not New York.
The bizarre part is that the Knicks somehow convinced themselves Anthony was the only marquee player available, despite the undeniable lure of the New York market -- a fact embarrassingly proved false when the Nets acquired Deron Williams for far less just a day later.
Now New York is left with a stripped-down roster that has two stars, a point guard aging before our eyes, and not a whole lot else. And although Anthony is good enough that having him and Billups is still slightly better than having Felton, Gallinari, Chandler and Timofey Mozgov, the opportunity cost of this acquisition was enormous -- the Knicks basically can't make any other moves involving a first-round pick for the next half-decade, and have no other young assets to put into deals for any other players. They recklessly committed all their assets to a deal that only marginally improved the team, much as they did nearly a decade earlier with the Stephon Marbury trade. While talk of a third star joining up looms in the background, the Knicks' cap situation and lack of trade assets makes it an unlikely scenario, as our Chad Ford recently detailed.
So the Knicks are an average team, or at best a slightly above-average one, and are likely to continue in that orbit until Stoudemire's knees give out. Melo will be blamed for this, but it's not his fault. The Knicks made a superstar trade for a player they should have known darn well wasn't a superstar, and denuded the roster in the process. As a result, they'll have trouble winning a single playoff series, either this year or in future ones.
But at least they won the news conference. In Dolan's world, the rest is secondary.
Let's try to elevate the level of discourse in this byeetch. Please
3/30/2011 2:54 PM
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