Carmelo Anthony, dropship mamba
Carmelo Anthony is officially a Hall of Famer. When the former Knick is inducted later this year, he’ll be the most significant Knick-related honoree since 2008, the year Patrick Ewing was inducted. Until Julius Randle and Jalen Brunson came along, Ewing and Anthony shared a bond as the last two Knicks of any consequence. The dropstep king and the dropship legend.
“Dropshipping” is a business model that’s popular online, where the business selling a product doesn’t store any or deliver it; that’s all done by a third-party. To some it seems shady, or suggests low-quality goods. Amazon used dropshipping as they built an empire so vast Jeff Bezos grew rich enough to oppose Donald Trump for a few years before eventually bending the knee. If you’ve ever ordered something online that looked like Zac Efron only for Zack Galifinakis to show up at your door, you, sweet reader, have been touched by the magical world of low overhead and “what quality control?”
Lottttta ways one can consider Carmelo’s career. For pretty much all of NBA history before Melo, someone with his resume would already have his number up in a few rafters and be a legend to two fan bases. Nobody in Denver pays me money, so let’s stick to Anthony’s time as a Knick. This is a franchise for whom 552 players have suited up over 79 seasons. Only two of them ever led the league in scoring: Melo and Bernard King. That’s an incredible accomplishment. Appropriately, Melo’s career scoring average with the Knicks was 24.7. He was always open for buckets.
If you were a fan in 2011, you remember the excitement at the growing talk of Anthony ending up with the Knicks. In terms of pure talent acquisition, Melo was probably a top-three trade in franchise history, along with King and Dave DeBusschere. Dude is 10th all-time in points! In the whole NBA, ever! Consider: Carmelo averaged 28.9 points a game when he was 22 years old. Only two Knicks ever averaged more in a season, and King in 1985 and Richie Guerin in 1962 were hardly 22. Here’s the complete list beyond Anthony of NBA players to score as many points as he did as young as he was: Oscar Robertson, Walt Bellamy, Rick Barry, Bob McAdoo, Shaquille O’Neal (twice), LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Trae Young. That’s it. Ever.
In the old century, it was enough to be prolific to be loved. Nobody blamed Harmon Killebrew for Washington and then Minnesota never winning it all. They just enjoyed all the dingers. King never won a best-of-seven in New York and played fewer games as a Knick than Malik Rose, and yet he’s revered even by fans who never saw him play. When you score the way he did, it echoes. Anyone can press the keys on a piano and make sounds. Vladimir Horowitz became the instrument. King became buckets incarnate.
In the new century, you can set a franchise record scoring 62 points and people will roll their eyes that you didn’t register an assist. Melo’s one of only 21 ever to score that many. And he’s not the only one to do so without sparing any dimes – Joe Fulks, Wilt Chamberlain and Kobe Bryant all did, too. That was always the thing with Melo. You could see him a hundred different ways; he was practically the human embodiment of “On the other hand . . . ” A Rohrschach test: always according to the eye of the beholder.
Was he a great shooter forced to carry a heavier burden due to sub-par teammates? Or an unrepentant, wasteful chucker? Take a look at the 10 Knicks who’ve made the most threes. Melo’s third. Only three shot them better than him, and two – Trent Tucker and Immanuel Quickley – took nowhere near as many, nor under the kind of duress Anthony did as a top-flight scorer. Allan Houston is the only marksman of note whose 3-ball was more pure (40% to 37%). If there’s a shooting contest and the only guy you’re losing to is Allan Houston, you’re sitting pretty.
But this is Melo, where the rabbit holes are bottomless. Anthony has the seventh-most points in franchise history. Only two Knicks above him had a worse career field goal percentage: Carl Braun and Richie Guerin, who played in an era where a man could lead the league in scoring shooting 26% from the floor.
So what was Anthony? A glutton whose vice was volume shooting? The apotheosis of Antoine Walker? Say it ain’t so, Melo.
Did you know Melo is the only player ever to score 50 points for and against the Knicks? The night he hung a half-dollar on them, the Nuggets’ starting five were all once or future Knicks (Anthony, Kenyon Martin, Chauncey Billups, Arron Afflalo and Nenê, who never played for New York but was drafted by them, then traded for a man who’d already had five knee surgeries). Before Anthony fought for the Knicks, he fought them. Literally. Well, less fought and more sucker-punched.
There was always a sense the marriage of Melo and MSG was not built on the sturdiest foundation, the unspoken but obvious truth that they needed him more than he did them. In dropshipping the seller always gets paid up front. So did Melo. Before he’d agree to be traded from Denver he wanted a two-year, $40 million extension that everyone knew wouldn’t exist after the impending labor lockout. He could have waited till the summer and signed for max money, rather than in a sign-and-trade that cost New York Danilo Gallinari, Wilson Chandler and two first-round picks (one of which became Jamal Murray). But the Dropship Mamba had to have that extra $40 million. Classic selfish athlete, right?
When Melo was up for a new deal in 2014, everyone knew team president Phil Jackson was gonna try to re-sign him while hoping Melo would leave some money on the table for the team to make other moves. The max Anthony could get was five years, $130 million. He took five for $125 million. The selfish athlete again, right?
Check the looking glass again, Alice. Consider the wonderland Melo found himself in once the trade was complete, and then imagine a wonderland you never imagined, one where Carmelo and Phil are two of the founding fathers of today’s 50-win Knick teams. Sound trippy? Stick with me here.
First, the argument for Phil boils down to two things he did that helped the team long after they booted his bony butt back to Montana, one of which was intentional and one which wasn’t. Jackson quite intentionally put a stop to the Knicks making an annual holiday outta pissing away their first-round picks. That may not sound like much today, when Leon Rose trades away five firsts in one deal and picks up extra seconds like it’s a bodily function, but consider how sick this franchise was 10 years ago. For all kinds of battles, from depression to obesity and everything in-between, sometimes a drug that just keeps you upright, just helps start you moving can push you in the right direction. Sometimes you just need a little normal to catch your breath and see things clearly. As far as draft picks, and only draft picks, that was Phil. Thank you, Big Chief Triangle.
What Phil didn’t mean to work out long-term was a disaster in its own time: Jackson’s failed scorched-earth tactics trying to make Melo waive his no-trade clause so the Knicks could ship him somewhere. Anthony saw firsthand how cutthroat the organization could be within his first year there. Billups didn’t want to be traded from Denver, for family reasons. The deal went through anyway, and a few weeks after their season ended the Knicks picked up the option for the final year of his deal. Then came the lockout, then a new CBA and then before the new season even got started Billups was gone, poof, amnestied.
Melo’s first day as a Knick, Amar’e Stoudemire was revered here. STAT had taken the money and the challenge of lifting the franchise in record and rep and delivered a standard of excellence not seen in New York for many years. And four months later, he’d been demoted from frontman to bass player. It only took a few months for Jeremy Lin to go from being so popular his play ended a Time Warner Cable/MSG pissing match to becoming persona non grata all because the Knicks dared him to find a team making a better offer than what they had in mind and he did. By the time Phil came in, Melo had seen enough to know the winds blow fast and fierce on 33rd Street.
Jackson made a mess out of trying to force Anthony to a trade when he didn’t want one, adding a uniquely sour aftertaste to the Rangers doing the same with Jacob Trouba last year. But shit is the shit, as far as fertilizer goes. The young Latvian drafted late in Anthony’s tenure saw the way a former icon the franchise had moved heaven and earth to acquire was dragged through hell because he didn’t wanna leave. As the young Latvian neared his own free agency, he didn’t approach the negotiations like some wide-eyed ingénue; he knew there are only so many times a player has the leverage over a team and when he does he better use it, ‘cuz the second the shoe’s on the other foot they will stomp him.
So the young Latvian forced a trade, which forced the Knicks into cap space, another rarity ‘round these parts for many years. That led to the big burly lefty, who was soon joined by the burly but littler lefty, who would soon wave goodbye to the big lefty and welcome in a bigger righty.
Randle, Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns: those kinds of players weren’t coming here while the Knicks’ reputation was somewhere between tatters and toxic. They had to change things at the roots to return to being an attractive option for players. That led them to trying something new: a team president whose first career had been as an agent, focused on finding fits between players and teams. In that sense, maybe Leon Rose’s hiring started with Melo. Maybe that extra $40 million was ultimately worth it.
Because it’s the Basketball Hall of Fame and not the NBA Hall of Fame, Melo doesn’t have to go in as a Nugget or a Knick; his legacies for Syracuse and USA Basketball are parts of the whole being honored. I wonder, if he had to pick, which he would. I wonder what would have happened if the Knicks had dared him to join the Nets. The Knicks may very well have then traded for Deron Williams. I don’t want to go any further down that rabbit hole.
Carmelo Anthony is, after Kevin Durant, the greatest pure scorer I have ever seen, and that includes the bald guy in Chicago and his talented Mr. Ripley in Los Angeles. His is a Lando Calrissian kind of charm, where someone undeniably cool is also unmistakably trying to be cool. I am certain he wears watches and drinks liquors whose names I’ll never know. Less clear is why a man who made $266 million in his 20s and 30s is doing so many commercials in his 40s.
“Board man gets paid,” Kawhi Leonard is said to have said. “Dropship, too,” Melo might answer. Paid all the way to Springfield. The Knicks were scrolling around looking for a savior and they saw Denver Melo on their screen. They clicked “buy” and got a mixed bag. There was 62. The Sunday ABC win over Chicago. Dragging them to their only playoff series win for 22 years. The Knicks didn’t win as many games with him here as many hoped, but most of those wins had more to do with him than anyone.
And there was the other stuff. The ill-fitting lineups. The lack of flexibility in the offense and the roster. The slow-dawning sense, soon after he arrived, that while he was, legally speaking, what we’d expected, he was also definitely not what we’d thought we were getting — and that’s a first ballot Hall of Famer. Only in New York.
