Knicks · Carmelo Anthony: Re-Signing With Knicks Is 'First Priority' From his lips. Melo ain't going nowhere. (page 2)

Mills biggest job is to find a way to add a Legit PG. Don't know who that could be, but Melo is just fine and does enough to win if you have a good supporting cast and that cast NEEDS a real PG. A good decision maker on the floor like a Rondo would be a perfect match with Melo. The idea that we need to have some huge influx of talent is overblown IMO. We lose due to having the worst back court in the league. Lots of mediocre players are made better by having a legit PG. I think THJ will be a fine SG going forward, so a legit PG is the missing piece. Melo went the furthest when he had Billups, so...

Bonn1997 wrote:

Papabear wrote:Papabear Says

We win with Melo with the right pieces in place. Look Paul Pierce how many rings did he win without Garnett and Ray Allen? How many rings did Garnett win without Ray Allen and Paul Pierce and how many rings did Ray Allen win with out Paul Pierce , Garnett, Lebron James and Wade?
It's like a song I wrote years ago. Everyone Needs Someone. And I know the Knicks record sucks and it doesn't matter if Melo is the best player on the team or not. It's that he is sticking it out in New York when no one else wanted to come here. They only used us to get more money from their teams. Melo is holding Dolan and Mills to the fire with let's get a plan together that I can believe in and sign off on.

Maybe no one else was dumb enough to come here

dolan was dumb enough to want him here. this is going to get real ugly. the way i see it is nobody can come here and nobody wants to come here either. between dolan and carmelo you have a real problem on your hands. if he asks for too much money he will alienate lots and lots of people. melo has painted himself into a corner. he has the power to finally do the right thing which is give up a significant chunk of salary-- not really a "sacrifice" and frankly wasn't back in 2011 either.

Look the mistake wasn't getting Melo. The mistake was not being patient and waiting on CP3!!!! That deal to not amnesty STAT but Billups and go for Tyson was the thing that really set this up in the wrong way. Once they had Melo they needed to GO GET THE PG!!! You can't build a team and leave it without a legit floor leader. If Melo's career showed anything it was that he needs to have a PG who is man enough to waive him off if needed. Now they'll have one more chance to build this thing right and find a PG to bring in here and run this team. It will never be as big as bringing CP3 in here but they have to make every effort to get the best PG they can.

Agree with you fully that using amnesty on anyone but Stat's contract was huge mistake. Charitable to call it impatience, if that's what it was, have to at least give credit to owner for urgency to try to win, even with ill advised move. Amazed - especially for a franchise which experienced the plight of Houston breaking down post contract - they'd use that gift on relatively small Billips contract.

See it differently on your PG comment. CP3 would be great add to this roster of course, but, seems to me that as Melo was unwilling to embrace Amare's style, MDA's system, and, it seemed to many, the PG-centric Linsanity era (to be clear, not for one second implying Lin is a fraction of the player CP is), that betting the next five years of the franchise that he would be willing to adjust his game for anybody, including CP3, represetsnt a very big leap of faith.

You may have missed it, but the debate du jour last week was over which basketball players deserved to be on the NBA's Mount Rushmore.

LeBron James sparked the debate when he told NBA TV's Steve Smith that Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Oscar Robertson and Magic Johnson would be the four players on his Mount Rushmore. But he made sure to note that he’d be on the monument one day.

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“I’m going to be one of the top four that’s ever played this game, for sure,” James said.

That sparked a debate among NBA observers over who deserves to be on the NBA’s Mount Rushmore and what makes a player an all-time great.

One interesting voice in this debate was George Karl. The ESPN analyst has been in and around the game for most of his life. He also coached Carmelo Anthony in Denver for seven-plus seasons.

So Karl was asked on SportsCenter about the difference between a player like Anthony, who hasn’t been mentioned as a “Mount Rushmore” candidate, and the all-time greats in the NBA.

“I think it all comes down to what is first on the list of their priorities. The great players -- it’s all about winning and it’s all about team and it’s about championship and it’s about sacrificing and disciplining yourself to where you try to get better and improve on a daily basis,” Karl said.

The implication there is that Anthony doesn’t do those things. Plenty of people around the Knicks may disagree with that sentiment.

Karl has an interesting perspective on Anthony. He coached Anthony as a younger player and he and Anthony reportedly butted heads at times. Karl also seemed to tire of the “MeloDrama” that engulfed the team in Anthony’s last season with the Nuggets.

Anthony led Denver to the playoffs every season, but the Nuggets made it out of the first round just once during his time there.

Later in the interview on SportsCenter, Karl expanded on the difference between the NBA’s all-time greats and a supremely talented player, such as Anthony.

“There’s an energy to a great player, there’s a leadership that you feel all around them. And then there are individual players that are very talented players ... That list hasn’t only got Melo on it, but it’s got a lot of players on it,” Karl said.

“Then as a coach, as an organization ... you try to mold them into a team player that wants to win a championship. But the great player, so much of the greatness in my mind is in his heart and his head. It’s not in his body, in his skill set. It comes from having great talent but wanting to mold that and fit it together into being special. And being special means winning championships.”

Anthony has said several times this season that his sole focus is to win an NBA title. That will be his top priority in free agency this summer.

"That's the only thing I care about," Anthony said earlier this month. "Anything else is irrelevant to me as far as when it comes to basketball. Championship is the only thing that's on my mind.”

http://http://espn.go.com/blog/new-yo...

Take it from a coach that has interacted and dealt with Melo for majority of his entire NBA career