Is Carmelo Anthony ever going to lead a team to the NBA championship? That's an easy question to answer when phrased in just that way. The answer is "no," he's unlikely to triumph as long as he is the No. 1 player.
Does that mean Anthony is doomed to never win the championship -- that he is so toxic that no team can win with him? To those who put it that way, my answer is an emphatic "no." In fact, I'd argue that it's easy to imagine Anthony's winning the championship as long as he is placed in the same role as Dwyane Wade, or Pau Gasol, or Paul Pierce, or Manu Ginobili.
Anthony has become such a lightning rod for the last-place Knicks (3-8) because he has been cast -- wrongly -- as his team's savior. Maybe it has to do with the fact that Anthony led Syracuse to the national championship and all of his NBA teams to the playoffs, which is something LeBron James has not done. And yet, we can all agree that Carmelo is not the equal of LeBron. He is one tier below LeBron -- it couldn't be more obvious. So why do people complain about Anthony as if he should be expected to do for the Knicks what James has done for the Heat?
If Anthony is your No. 1 player, then your team is probably not going to win the championship. But that doesn't mean he's not capable of ever winning the final game in June. All it means is that he needs to be paired with a complementary star, which -- as his highly esteemed peers Wade, Gasol, Pierce or Ginobili would tell you -- is the formula of success for every All-NBA player in the league today.
With apologies to longtime readers, I'm going to repeat myself by comparing the career track of Anthony to that of Pierce, who was accused of being a selfish, one-dimensional scorer, because he lacked star talent around him. Opinions of Pierce were spun right-side up when he was 30, because that's when the Celtics surrounded him with Kevin Garnett, who instantly became their No. 1 player, and Ray Allen, who was their third-best player. Pierce became the No. 2 star in Boston, and he had no problem with that.
Pierce and his new teammates were so successful together because they were in their 30s. Former Celtics coach Doc Rivers has said repeatedly that Garnett, Pierce and Allen probably would not have bonded in their 20s because they were too focused on establishing their individual careers. By the time they reached their 30s, they had proved themselves statistically, and all that was left for them to accomplish was the ultimate goal of winning as a team.
Anthony has reached that crossroads. He is going to turn 30 in late May, weeks after the end of the regular season. He surely recognizes that he and Dwight Howard are the two most polarizing stars in the league today, but the difference between them is that Anthony is aggressive. When Howard's teams have needed him to take charge in recent years, he has appeared to back away. No one can say that about Anthony. He attacks challenges. Howard backed away from the pressures of Los Angeles, but Anthony wanted to go to New York to perform on the biggest stage, and when Anthony's team has been in trouble, he has tried to lead as best he can -- by scoring.
Just because he rates below James and other stars at the highest level doesn't mean that Anthony isn't extremely valuable. The reason James and Garnett went years without winning the championship was because they lacked a co-star like Anthony.
Anthony can be to a championship team what Pierce was to the 2007-08 Celtics. In 2015, when the Knicks have cap space, Anthony will be 31. By then, he won't care whether he's the No. 1 star any more than Pierce cared. Pierce was happy to defer to Garnett; even when Pierce was named MVP of the 2008 NBA Finals, there was never any doubt that Garnett was the Celtics' most important player. The same thing will be true with Anthony if whoever is running the Knicks in 2015 is able to use their cap space that summer to acquire a star to complement Carmelo's scoring.
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The only time Anthony has ever played meaningful games with more talented teammates has been at the Olympics, where he openly deferred to James and Kobe Bryant. The United States has won the last two gold medals and there has been no hint of a problem from Anthony, even when he came off the bench behind Kevin Durant in the 2012 gold-medal game in London. After so many years of criticism for his failure to reach an NBA Finals, Anthony would embrace the opportunity of playing with his version of Garnett.
Think about how difficult it might have been for Pierce and Wade to surrender control of their franchises in Boston and Miami, respectively. If each of those strong-minded stars was able to defer to a superior newcomer like Garnett or James, then surely Anthony would do the same in New York in order to win the championship.
While we're at it, can we dispel this idea that the Knicks were wrong to trade for Anthony in 2011? Who else were they going to acquire? The only other star who turned out to be on the market at that time was Deron Williams, who went to the Nets when they failed to land Anthony. (The Knicks were never going to be able to trade for Chris Paul because they lacked the young talent and payroll relief that commissioner David Stern was seeking in his unfortunate role as caretaker owner of New Orleans.) In the months afterward there was talk that the Nets had made the superior deal, but I don't think anyone would say that Williams is more valuable than Anthony today.
The Knicks gave up a lot of replaceable role players to acquire Anthony:
• Danilo Gallinari, who has averaged 15.5 points and shot 41.6 percent from the field in 128 games with the Nuggets. He sustained a torn ACL last April.
• Raymond Felton, who is back with the Knicks after disappointing seasons with the Nuggets and Trail Blazers.
• Wilson Chandler, who has averaged 12.3 points in 77 games with Denver.
• Timofey Mozgov, the "deal-breaker," who has been DNP for more than 40 percent of his games as a Nugget, and has averaged 4.7 points in 13 minutes when he has played.
• Eddy Curry, who has played 108 minutes since the trade.
• Anthony Randolph, who has averaged 6.9 points with two teams since the trade.
• Two second-round picks that turned into Quincy Miller and Romero Osby, who between them have played a total of 27 NBA minutes.
• A first-round pick in the 2014 draft, which may turn out to be the most valuable piece surrendered by New York.
Not only did the Knicks receive Anthony, but they also acquired Chauncey Billups, whose contract (via amnesty) enabled them to land Tyson Chandler. So they were able to exchange those role players (whose value had suddenly increased thanks to coach Mike D'Antoni's offensive system) for one of the NBA's most prolific scorers and a championship center.
The Nuggets did as well as they could have done in the deal -- they made three straight postseasons and won 57 games last year. But they would also acknowledge that their preference would have been to keep Anthony and not make that trade. It was a tremendous move for New York.
The Knicks look like they have no spirit right now, but is that Anthony's fault? While Tyson Chandler recovers from a broken leg and Amar'e Stoudemire provides 3.6 points per game, Anthony is left to lead a hopeless roster of Andrea Bargnani, J.R. Smith, Felton and Metta World Peace -- all reclaimed by the Knicks after being dumped by their former teams. And we're supposed to believe their losing record is the fault of the star who is averaging 26.1 points and 9.5 rebounds? Forgive me if I fail to understand the logic.
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