WEST POINT — The visiting athlete who stirred the masses and nearly fried the Internet was Matt Harvey, who attended Derek Jeter’s final game at Yankee Stadium last week (wearing a Knicks hat, of course) and, depending on your point of view, solidified his reputation as either a narcissist or a defiant individualist.
Either way, it made for a fun half-hour or so on Twitter.
But the one for whom the evening was most important spent his nine innings in The Bronx quietly, away from Instagram, away from the howling multitudes. That was Carmelo Anthony.
“I’m a student of his,” Anthony said of the retiring Yankees captain. “He’s always been a mentor to me. He is a guy that I really listen to when he talks because he gets it.”
Anthony had a small but perfectly played part in the commercial that Nike debuted at the All-Star Game (appearing via smartphone!), which itself first hit the air less than two days after Anthony officially announced he was coming back to the Knicks, coming back to New York City, and those are two things that always will be intertwined.
Jeter, of course, set a gold standard for all athletes present and future who wish to seek all the riches (and all the potential pratfalls) that come with plying their trade in New York. Anthony made it clear that it isn’t as if he and Jeter have had long seminars together on the do’s and don’ts of such a professional life.
But Anthony did pay attention. Closely.
“I tip my cap to him — and I know that’s kind of a cliché now,” Anthony said, chuckling, a few minutes after the Knicks wrapped up their first official practice under Derek Fisher at Christl Arena, on the campus of the US Military Academy.
“He is one of the few guys who was able to have a long stint here and be successful here,” Anthony said. “So you’ve got to pay your respects to that, so when you talk, you got to sit and listen and really take heed to what he is saying.”
It never occurred to Jeter to leave, of course, not before he signed the 10-year, $189 million deal that carried him the bulk of his career, not during more recent and more contentious negotiations. He never came close to being wooed the way Melo was wooed this summer, never came close to exploring other options.
Of course, Jeter also never had to orchestrate or engineer his way here; he fell to the Yankees in the draft, he survived the minefield that so many Yankees prospects had to endure when George Steinbrenner was lord of the manor, and he tasted immediate and substantial success.
Melo’s saga has been different in almost every way. And yet as he watched the Bronx ending for Jeter on Thursday night — as he saw the screenplay-perfect final at-bat, and the ear-splitting roar that followed, and the fact nobody wanted the night — or Jeter’s Stadium career — to end? Well, there would be something wrong if that didn’t get his imagination racing.
“Nobody could have written that ending for him,” Anthony said. “I was just taking it all in. It was a great moment for him, and it was great for me to be a part of it.”
And here’s the crazy part: Before this was a Jeter town, before this was a Yankees town, it was a Knicks town, completely and entirely. Fifteen years of mishap and mismanagement have muted that, but even two years ago, during an oasis of prosperity, that much was clear.
Back in the day, even championship Yankees seasons never really started in New York until the Knicks’ season was over.
That’s what is available to Melo now, a city looking to fill a gaping void, looking for another icon around whom to wrap its arms. The job is available. And the Knicks always have been an ideal platform to deliver that. If they win, of course,
“I wasn’t even getting sleep last week, I was itching to get back on the court,” he said. “I really wanted to start camp quicker and get to work.”
So much of Melo’s career in New York has tended to weigh closer to the A-Rod side of the sliding scale, from the outsized expectations that his gifts demand to the questions surrounding his propensity in the clutch. It doesn’t have to be that way forever. And after seeing what life looks like, and sounds like, on the other side of that scale?
“I want to be a part of that,” Anthony said.
It’s there for him. Now all he needs to do is grab it.