Most athletes, while they’re in the thick of their primes, have better things to worry about than the legacy they’ll leave behind. They cede such discussions to those of us who never actually had athletic primes.
I think Carmelo Anthony is different.
I think his legacy matters to him. I think he cares about how New York City will remember him. And I think it bothers him that, as of right now, this is not headed toward happily-ever-after.
Anthony didn’t practice with the team Thursday at the Westchester practice facility, this a day after turning in one of his worst performances of the year in a 108-105 loss to the Pacers, this three days after allowing his frustration about another nowhere season to bubble to the surface.
“Regardless of the record, just losing, accepting that, it’s hard to accept that,” Anthony had seethed after the Raptors ripped the Knicks Monday night at the Garden. “You can’t be accepting that. I hope that’s not the case with the guys. You don’t want to get used to losing.”
Anthony just passed his five-year anniversary as a Knick, a time by which he surely believed he would have ascended to a prominent place in the team’s pantheon. Instead the numbers have been humbling: one playoff series victory. Seven postseason wins. One historically brutal season. One knee surgery.
One permanent lightning rod.
“It’s been tough,” he’d said Monday night. “It’s challenging, but you got to stay strong and positive.”
If anything, Melo’s legacy, where it sits right now, is this: damned for what he’s done, damned for what he hasn’t done; damned for what he was supposed to be, damned for what he is.
So much of what he’s been, and what he is, is supposed to jibe with the basic affinities of sports fans who call this city home, after all. New York not only appealed to him, but he actively sought it out. And then, even as the storybook frayed at the edges, he wanted to stay here.
Has all of this been backdropped by cynical counter-balances? Sure. He’s made more money as a result of coming, and staying. But one thing we’ve learned: New York isn’t the magnet it used to be for stars of Melo’s magnitude. No need to list here the bold-faced names in all four sports who have bypassed New York for any number of reasons. He wanted to be here. He said it. I believe he meant it.
That’s supposed to count for something.
But even that basic truth hasn’t saved him.
Yes, he wanted to be here … but at what cost, not only the bounty the Knicks swapped to Denver to bring him here but the keys to the franchise car he was given the moment he showed up?
Yes, he decided to stay here … but what does that tell you about how much he really wants to win? Who knows how far the Bulls or Rockets could have gone with him in their lineups (assuming his knee would’ve held up)?
Yes, in his singular time of triumph three years ago he damn near carried the Knicks the whole way and was a legitimate MVP candidate … but when the Knicks needed him one additional time that year, Game 6 against the Pacers, he went up for a dunk and ran into Roy Hibbert, and it has been a steady descent from the apex of that leap for almost three uninterrupted years …
Now, it is increasingly hard to find anyone who believes, whatever the solution for the Knicks is, that Anthony ought to be a part of it. That doesn’t include his teammates and his coaches, who know how good he is, who know how much this affects him.
“You don’t want guys that just roll over and accept this losing,” Kurt Rambis said.
“I wouldn’t want to lose him,” Kristaps Porzingis said.
There remains a stubborn circle of people – count me among them – who cling to the belief that this can still end well for Anthony, that the right coach (also known as Tom Thibodeau) and the successful recruiting of a professional point guard (also known as Mike Conley) can offer the kind of Second Act that Melo so clearly craves.
But that circle is shrinking. You can hear it. You can see it. You can sense it. Carmelo Anthony continues to fight for a legacy that already has been completed in the minds and imaginations of so many Knicks fans. Is time running out on him?
Worse: Has it already?