MELO HAS BEEN USED AND PLAYED, says Stephen A Smith

Completely agree with you, Butler had an awesome season!

 

Anyone can contribute to a winning team in the RIGHT situation, including Carmelo Anthony. However, with him taking up that big a chunk of the Knicks' salary cap, the chance of them building the type of situation that would win a championship is slim to none. To do so, they would essentially have to find 3-4 guys that massively outplay their contract a la Draymond Green. There are some players that can eat up that much money, and you can still build a winning team - Lebron, Anthony Davis, healthy Durant - but Carmelo isn't one of them.

 

Lol @ used

 

People don't like Hinkie in Philly.

 

Uh, lol. Is water wet? Subjective. Hahahaha!

 

They should judge phil in a few years.
The knicks won't win anything with carmelo with any of the other guys drafted ahead of okafur.

Knicks fans are supremely arogrant and delusional.
You realize they had a documentary about the team that lost to clutch city right?

A full blown doc about the losing team.

And john starks was overrated

 

I agree that they are wasting Melo but S.A. Smith is being a fan not a reporter. It will be 3 years before Porzingis starts to show up. We know what Phil Jackson thinks of Carmelo Anthony. Jackson doesn't give a flip what New Yorkers think, hilarious!

 

If your argument is that you don't throw that kind of money at Melo because he cannot win a championship being the alpha, I kind of agree with you. He obviously needs to be surrounded with a 2a, 2b, 2c, etc talents to make it work (see his success with Denver). Having said that, the exceptions to those players are few and far between.

I do disagree that it was indefensible. The Knicks had to do it. This isn't the Kobe situation, Melo is still a very capable player and you HAVE to pony up to retain his services. If you have been in a high profile market like New York, you'd see that the Knicks organization could never live down letting a local kid get away because they were unwilling to pay. Hell, just look at the crap that Hinkie has to put with from the Philly fanbase/media.

That contract looked bad in a vacuum, but it makes much more sense when you consider that the Knicks now only have Calderon as the other large salary under contract. Also, if you consider that Melo's contract will only constitute 27% of the projected $90m cap in 2016-17, it really isn't that bad.

 

Melo had a chance to win in either Chicago or us, but chose the limelight of NY. He chose the $$$ over basketball. When I heard Lala had say in where he chose to play I KNEW it wasn't gonna be a basketball decision

 

Sad to see the waning years of Melo's career wasted like this.

 

If by "sad" you mean "hilarious", I agree.

 

Ya, I can see your point - it does make some sense when you put it that way. Still you gotta wonder how small the market is for teams looking for projects during a rebuild that actually have assets that can help a Knicks team that should be contending in the East if they are paying Melo an obscene amount of money.

 

Wasted career??? More like he ripped off the city of New York after trolling other NBA cities during his free agency... funny that SAS ripped Phil Jackson, but kept his mouth quiet after Melo essentially handicapped the Knicks...

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Carmelo, according to source, called Tim Hardaway Jr. late Thursday to express his displeasure with Phil Jackson's draft night moves. Oh boy</p>&mdash; Frank Isola (@FisolaNYDN) <a href="https://twitter.com/FisolaNYDN/status/614463369081417728">June 26, 2015</a></blockquote>
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Yeah dude is a racist. Not surprising he belittles the Euro, white, asian players. And always sticking up for his NBA "contacts" who all happen to be black.

You should have seen his belittling rants against Dellevanova. His knob slobbing of Mayweather's nice house and cars was embarrassing to watch LOL.

Maybe a business move, maybe a racist. Probably a bit of both.

 

This.

Phil and Melo deserve each other. Both have big egos and willingly signed for the money and glamor in NY. The only people who suffer are the Knicks fans.

 

I'm not a New Yorker, so I can't claim to know what their mindset is like, but if the Rockets were devoid of any talent and Morey overpaid simply to retain the services of Melo or someone of his caliber, I would be calling for his head. With the salary cap system, you only have so many marbles to play with, and if you allocate more money to a player than the value provided by said player, then you also need a player to produce more value than the amount of money allocated to him. The problem is that the latter is largely a luck of draw. Essentially every championship team in the past decade has had guys that largely overproduced compared to their paycheck. The Warriors have Draymond, Curry, and Harrison Barnes. The Heat had Lebron. The Spurs, by virtue of their system, has essentially an entire roster full of guys that overachieve. Dallas has Dirk, who took a huge paycut.

Fortunately, I think Morey understands this as he said you want to be the one who discovers Chandler Parsons - not the one that pays him, because the moment you pay him at or above market, then his value for a team plummets. And that's why the true superstars in the league are so valuable. It's not because they're that much better than the other guys - it's the fact that the max contract makes it so that you are always extracting value by underpaying them. Chasing after and paying max for legit perennial Allstars is fine, but you're simply getting what you pay for. Chasing after and paying max for borderline All-Stars is, in my opinion, indefensible.

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Carmelo feels Phil needs to make moves that can help immediately. &quot;He said, 'we have to wait three years for this guy?'&quot; Knick source claims</p>&mdash; Frank Isola (@FisolaNYDN) <a href="https://twitter.com/FisolaNYDN/status/614464218864197632">June 26, 2015</a></blockquote>
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I agree. Phil knows the Knicks are no where close to winning. I don't think any rookie in this draft would have put the Knicks into contention.

Resigning Melo before the massive cap increase would make him a good trade target for teams needing another star. He was almost forced into resigning Melo because of the crazy outrage that would have ensued if he didn't. Bringing in a high-potential pick that will develop in a couple of years (after you can dump Melo) allows you to continue shedding bad contracts. Even with Carmelo resigned, the Knicks would never be able to swing a deal for another star -- they have nothing to offer.

I think Melo gets moved sometime soon. Wouldn't be surprised if Phil is purposefully making him disgruntlted so he forces a trade and the rebuild can continue. New York will always be a destination franchise, Phil's just setting them up to be big players in the coming years.