Carmelo

Tom Ley doesn’t care if Carmelo Anthony wins a championship. He just wants his time as a Knick to be fun to watch.

This past Saturday I watched the Denver Nuggets defeat the New York Knicks in double overtime. It wasn’t the prettiest game I’ve ever seen, but it had its fair share of what-the-fuck moments (excuse me, Andre Miller?) and was a great win for Nuggets squad that was finishing up perhaps its most difficult stretch of the season.

Of course, there were other narratives at work in this game, as it was the first time that Carmelo Anthony had to face the Denver Nuggets since spurning his former team and forcing a trade to New York. As a Nuggets fan, I expected to be supremely satisfied with the outcome of the game. I assumed that the Nuggets’ gutty performance, combined with Anthony’s underwhelming shooting night would evoke some kind of “how you like me now?” feeling of smugness from the more petty regions of my fan identity. So I was surprised when that wasn’t at all how I felt as I watched Anthony and his Knicks teammates walk off of the court in defeat. What I felt instead was sadness and disappointment.

As I’ve written before, I was at peace with losing Carmelo Anthony when he was traded to the Knicks in the middle of last season. What I neglected to mention in that particular post, however, was that I was  also content with Anthony leaving because I was legitimately excited to see what he could become in New York. His career as a Nugget had run its course, and at the time it felt like his move to New York would bring with it the opportunity to grow and evolve as a player. Purely as a basketball fan, I desperately wanted to see this evolution take place. I wanted to see what would become of Anthony’s methodical, suffocating talent when combined with another legitimate superstar and a more player-friendly, open-source coach. I expected to see Anthony achieve things that he never would have been able to as a Nugget.

And yet as I watched Anthony hoist up shot after shot during Saturday’s game, I saw no signs that he was anywhere close to evolving as a player in a meaningful way. Granted, he hit a few big shots in the 4th quarter and in overtime, but he also did a lot of stupid things, like dribble headlong into a triple team before flinging the ball out of bounds in a wild shot attempt. That’s the shit that I spent seven years watching Anthony do in Denver, and it’s played out. At least back then, he had a more legitimate excuse for that kind of shot selection, but his sole purpose for coming to New York was to pair his spark with Amar’e Stoudemire’s, making it unnecessary for him to go on leading a life of shooting over double teams. This new existence was not to be on Saturday night, as Anthony completely froze out Stoudemire during the fourth quarter and both overtimes. Stoudemire only shot the ball once over that time-span, and that was on a desperation three-pointer (which he made, by the way) at the end of the second OT.

Anthony’s decision making was so maddening because he should know better by now. He spent seven years in Denver ball-stopping his way to underwhelming finishes, and there is no reason to think that doing the same thing in New York will bring different results. Why not try running a few pick-and-rolls with Stoudemire down the stretch? Anthony’s a capable passer, and Stoudemire is only one of the best pick-and-roll power forwards to ever play the game. Why not at least give Amar’e some kind of opportunity to create his own offense, if only to prevent the Nuggets from completely keying in on Anthony? Instead, Anthony chose to do what he’s always done: unleash a flurry jump shots, swarming defenders be damned.

There are plenty of reasons to gnash one’s teeth at the current state of the NBA, an era which has given rise to the superstar leveraging himself onto a team of his choosing through shrewd media tactics and the machinations of World Wide Wes’ Illuminati. Not one of these reasons, however, has anything to do with the action on the court, as each new “super team” brings with it the potential to witness some truly transcendent, awe-inspiring basketball.

Sure, everybody’s heart broke for New Orleans when Chris Paul skipped town, but it didn’t take long for all the caterwauling about parity and the death of small market teams to be replaced by pledges of allegiance to the newly raised Lob City.

LeBron James and his preening sidekicks may have put their painful growing pains on display for all to see last season, but at least there were growing pains to be had. Their failures told us that yes, this team is a massively ambitious experiment, and that yes, we are trying to create something new here. The formula is still being worked out in Miami, but at least basketball fans can look forward to the end result, which will either be abject failure or a brand of basketball that will blow our collective minds.

There doesn’t seem to be any such climax to anticipate in New York. It seems as if the die has already been cast. I hope very much that I am wrong, and that Anthony won’t remain a static fixture at the elbow, stroking the same jumpshot that he has a million times before. I hope that Amar’e won’t continue to get his scraps where he can, choosing to repeat his careen-down-the-lane-and-crash-into-someone’s-chest-before-throwing-up-a-shot move until it becomes a running joke.

Whether Carmelo Anthony ultimately succeeds (i.e. wins a championship) in New York matters very little to me. What does matter to me is that he takes advantage of every opportunity that has been given to him to become the most compelling version of himself on the court. I don’t wish for success or failure. I only wish for beauty.

—Photo Winslow Townson/AP