Carmelo Anthony and the Knicks are in the midst of a forgettable season. Getty Images
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Chris Herring
Updated Dec. 30, 2014 7:48 p.m. ET
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MIAMI—After yet another loss in a season that’s been chock full of them, Knicks star Carmelo Anthony fielded a postgame question: Is there anyone you’ve been able to lean on or talk to for advice as the team falls further out of contention?
Anthony shook his head no. “I don’t think anybody can tell me how to deal with this if they haven’t been through it [themselves],” he said earlier this month.
But perhaps Anthony could turn to Dwyane Wade, his teammate on the 2004 and 2008 Olympic teams, for counsel. Wade and the Miami Heat endured a brutal 15-67 campaign in 2007-08 before landing the draft’s No. 2 pick and winning 43 games the following season.
On the Knicks
This is the first in a series of occasional looks on the outlook for the Knicks franchise.
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“Man, I try so hard to [mentally] put that season away,” Wade said when asked what about that time. “It was the worst. Terrible. I remember going to the All-Star break that year, and we had nine wins.
“We were only a year or two removed from a title. But [winning every year] doesn’t happen for everyone. That’s the NBA sometimes,” he continued. “Sometimes you have to go through a rebuild, and it’s unfortunate. Everyone wants to be successful every year, but sometimes you have to take a step back to go forward.”
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While Miami improved following that disappointing season, the Heat didn’t become elite again until 2010, when LeBron James and Chris Bosh signed on to form the Big Three.
It’s too early to know whether these Knicks—with cap space next summer—can turn things around and achieve long-term success. But if asked, Wade might suggest Anthony take the same steps Miami did in 2008.
Like Anthony, Wade played on a bad left knee in 2008. But eventually, at Pat Riley’s urging, Wade had season-ending OssaTron shockwave therapy done on his knee. “There’s no doubt [this decision] is a function of our record. My God, it doesn’t take a news bulletin for that,” the ex-Knick coach told reporters at the time. “We know we aren’t making the playoffs. It’s a lost season. We don’t want it to be a lost career.” (Wade, who’d signed an $80-million deal a year before, was 26 that year. Anthony, who just signed a $124-million agreement, is 30.)
Shelving Anthony—who’s currently resistant to suggestions of shutting it down for the season—would be sensible for the Knicks, who are in prime position to get their first top-five draft selection in 28 years.
The worse their record, the better their odds of securing a top pick. Which means they’d be better served by having Anthony sit until they can surround him with a competitive team.
This season has made it painfully clear that, despite having Anthony, New York’s roster is deeply flawed. The Knicks, 40% of the way through their season, are on pace for a 12-70 finish. The 1962-63 Knicks posted a franchise-worst 21-59 mark.
Anthony has been the least of the team’s problems, but it’s relatively unusual for a team to struggle this badly with a player of his caliber—in his prime, no less—on the payroll.
Throughout NBA history, only six players 30 or younger—Jack Twyman in 1960, Walt Bellamy in 1962, Sidney Wicks in 1972, Antawn Jamison in 2001, Wade in 2008 and Kevin Martin in 2009—have averaged 24 points in a season, yet failed to lead their team to at least 20 wins, according to Stats LLC.
The Knicks have floundered even more as injuries have piled up, likely making rookie coach Derek Fisher look worse.
Dwyane Wade and the Miami Heat finished 15-67 in the 2007-08 season. ENLARGE
Dwyane Wade and the Miami Heat finished 15-67 in the 2007-08 season. NBAE/Getty Images
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By contrast, Erik Spoelstra never had such lows during the Heat’s initial rebuild, as he took over as head coach after the 2007-08 season. In fact, Spoelstra said Riley waited to make him head coach because the Hall of Famer felt it’d be unfair to toss a first-time coach into the bleak situation.
“It was fun toward the end of that year, because we weren’t trying to win by that point. That’s why Pat always says he didn’t hand the job to me then: He knew he could get us where we needed to go [in the rebuild]. I could have done the same thing, but I would have been trying to win a lot more,” said Spoelstra, adding that he’d give $20 to anyone who could name Miami’s starting five from the final game of that season. (Daequan Cook, Ricky Davis, Mark Blount, Chris Quinn and Stephane Lasme is the answer. Tellingly, none of those players are currently in the NBA.)
Fisher insists he’s fine with the hand he’s been dealt. “We all have to start somewhere,” said Fisher, who seems wedded to team president Phil Jackson’s triangle offense. “To be blessed and fortunate enough to have this opportunity right [out of retirement], I never had any expectation that it was going to be easy, anyway. I always expected it to be a challenge.”
Given that he initially said the playoffs were realistic, it’s clear Jackson—who declined to take questions from reporters on Tuesday—never imagined things could get this bad. But regardless of the expectations then, he’s tasked with making the most of a bleak situation now.
“There’s a light at the end of every tunnel—you just don’t know where that light is sometimes,” Wade said of Miami’s situation in 2008. “But we eventually found the light and came out of it, and we’re a multi-championship organization now.”
Jackson needs to find a way to bring the Knicks out of the dark. And as foreign as the idea might seem to someone with 13 rings, the quickest route to doing that may be to lose in the short-term, like Miami illustrated seven years ago.
12/31/2014 10:15 PM
