Sources: Strife builds within Knicks

mafra

Legend
The New York Knicks were en route to their fifth straight loss last week against Brooklyn when a frustrated Tim Hardaway Jr. screamed angrily, "Get the rebound!"


Certain his second-year teammate was speaking to him, Carmelo Anthony approached Hardaway on the way down the court and used an expletive to ask Hardaway who in the world he thought he was talking to.


Anthony, according to sources, used another expletive in telling Hardaway he was going to beat him up when they got into the locker room after the game.


While the two players never wound up fighting, the episode was emblematic of the volatile state of the Knicks. Off to their worst start in franchise history at 4-19, the Knicks are a team full of discord, defiance and doubt, according to sources with knowledge of the situation.


"Nobody's taken a swing at anybody, but there's a lot of arguing and cursing each other out after games," one source said.



In addition to the Knicks' lack of chemistry, sources say the players believe coach Derek Fisher's insistence on running the triangle offense is another key reason for New York's struggles.


Anthony could not be reached for comment Wednesday. The Knicks play at San Antonio on Wednesday night, and Anthony said after Tuesday's 104-93 loss at New Orleans -- New York's ninth straight defeat -- that he is considering giving his ailing right knee a rest.


Several Knicks, in addition to Hardaway, are at odds with Anthony and believe he is not playing team basketball. Sources said players voiced their displeasure with Anthony over the weekend, telling him he shoots too much, doesn't move or pass the ball, and plays defense only when he feels like it.



Sources said the most tension exists between Anthony and Hardaway, as they haven't cared for each other almost since Hardaway joined the team last season, with each player believing the other shoots too much and doesn't care about defense. Sources said Hardaway was also bothered by the favorable treatment Anthony received under last season's coach, Mike Woodson





One thing Anthony and his teammates do agree on is their disdain for the triangle offense, sources said. For weeks, if not longer, the players have been ready to ditch the triangle and move on to another system. They feel like other teams know what they are going to run and where they are going to go on the court, which makes it easier to stop them.


When team president Phil Jackson gave his state of the team address Monday, he said the Knicks players have shown defiance to the changes he and Fisher have made in the name of "changing the culture."


"There's some resistance to discipline and order and culture change and things like that," Jackson said.
The players' dislike for the triangle is a part of that. But there is more.


Last season, under Woodson, the Knicks switched on defense. This season, under Fisher, they don't switch, which has some players grumbling.


Also, the day after losses, Woodson would typically hold voluntarily workouts that were light and nondemanding. Fisher, however, holds full-fledged practices and works the players hard.



"Guys are definitely frustrated," one source said. "But some of it's just basketball stuff that the players don't like doing. When somebody's demanding that you make a hard cut, you don't like it because you have to work harder. When someone says it's not OK to throw a bulls--- pass, guys don't like it."


But the players don't feel like Fisher is being too hard on them, sources said. In fact, some feel his sideline demeanor is too stoic and that they would like to see more emotion out of him.


"They almost want to see Fisher get upset during a game," one source said. "They want to know that their coach will go to battle with them, that he'll fight for them. They're not seeing any emotion out of him."


With free agents who signed before Sept. 16 becoming available for trade Dec. 15, the Knicks could look to make roster changes soon -- with sources saying J.R. Smith is the player they'd most like to trade.


By Chris Broussard
-------------------

If this is true... then it's time to trade 'Melo. Phil and DF are winners. Systems work better than individuals. See SA

Anthony is wrapped up in pursuing off court biz interests. NOT WINNING. His body already breaking down. Time to blow it up before he tries to get another coach fired.
 

Kiyaman

Legend
2010 - Melo vs Billups
2011 - Melo vs Amare
2012 - Melo vs "Old-Heads"
2013 - Melo vs Shump
2014 - Melo vs Tim Hardaway Jr.
2015 - Melo vs Top Pick
 
You ever do something with another person and have the activity not go right and you yell at them? Does that make you two mortal enemies? This is a non-story on a terrible team. Melo is pissed. THJ is pissed. Heck, I'm pissed. And we all should be. I'd be more worried if everyone on this team was having a good time and loving each other, because we stink. It's time to see some emotion. If these guys need to fight each other to figure things out, than so be it.
 

tiger0330

Legend
Let it all fall apart, not only would the Knicks get a lottery pick but Melo might waive that no trade clause to go to a team that can win.

My guess is someone wants him despite his 25M salary.
 

disGRUNTled

Rookie
Let it all fall apart, not only would the Knicks get a lottery pick but Melo might waive that no trade clause to go to a team that can win.

My guess is someone wants him despite his 25M salary.

so-much-THIS-fireworks.gif


Melo is not "the guy" that is going to lead a team to the promise land as the premier piece , But can help a team that all ready has "that guy". If we can trade him we need to . Keep tanking like we are draft Okafor and build around him ..
 

The Dragon

Benchwarmer
you know, I am not so much against trading Melo right now, something is not working out, and the pain of every new season is becoming bigger and harder, come on now, a team with so much money and that big fan base.....what the hell is happening !!!!
 

paris401

Starter
just remember... 20+ mill goes out the door when Me-Lo leaves... n 20m come back in

personally, I don't think there is another home for him...good teams don't want him messing up their chemistry, n bad teams... well they see what he's doing on another bad team...

he's the wrong side of 30... yep another a'mare contract... mite even be worse...
 

tiger0330

Legend
just remember... 20+ mill goes out the door when Me-Lo leaves... n 20m come back in

personally, I don't think there is another home for him...good teams don't want him messing up their chemistry, n bad teams... well they see what he's doing on another bad team...

he's the wrong side of 30... yep another a'mare contract... mite even be worse...
Maybe the Lakers, we get Kobe for a year and we really clear cap space in 2016.
 
Talking about trading Melo now is insane. This is the lowest his value ever has been in his professional career. He is banged up and just signed a long term mega deal. There will be a time when people will remember that he is an uber value asset in this league, regardless of what this forum thinks of him. If he is healthy and can score like he has the past 2 seasons, he is absolutely a player that could get us a strong package for rebuilding, just not now. Also, Knicks are never trading Melo.
 

Kiyaman

Legend
Talking about trading Melo now is insane. This is the lowest his value ever has been in his professional career. He is banged up and just signed a long term mega deal. There will be a time when people will remember that he is an uber value asset in this league, regardless of what this forum thinks of him. If he is healthy and can score like he has the past 2 seasons, he is absolutely a player that could get us a strong package for rebuilding, just not now. Also, Knicks are never trading Melo.

Trading Melo is not insane, its just to damn late.
Dolan wanting a celebrity-star for the Knicks and his other function chose Melo in 2010-11.
Dolan didnt get the message last season that he made a F up choice in 2010-11.

Dolan's ignorance is BLISS when it comes to winning NBA B.ball .... for Dolan not to see this last year this time when the Knicks record were 5-15, plus the franchise star-player persistence on searching the FA market in offseason.
Hiring Phil Jackson were suppose to fix everything .. what Dolan forgot was Phil Jackson retired from coaching.
Dolan has been considered a LOSER in the NBA the first day his pops gave him the Knicks.

Melo has so many flaws in his talent that it out-weighs the talent of his individual high scoring.
 

Scipio

Benchwarmer
This story is no big surprise. Ever since the rebuild started by Donnie Walsh was destroyed by Dolan signing `Melo this team has been doomed to failure. He is lazy, selfish and only plays for his scoring average and nothing else. As long as `Melo is here we will go nowhere because he will always be Dolans golden boy because of the income that he generates.

Even if we get a great pick in the draft and land a fantastic rookie nothing will change because Melo will be the focus of the team. We are stuck with him now and given that he`s the wrong side of thirty his talents will only diminish. Get used t it Knicks fans there are years more of pain ahead.
 

Kiyaman

Legend
The Knicks lack of team-chemistry, lack of team-communication has lead the team to a 4-20 start (the worst in NBA), and all this is on rookie coach Fisher for his lack of Team-Coaching. Melo has nothing to do with this absurd losing start.

If THJ, Shump, or Calderon were to scream at Melo or Stat to run or box-out for the rebound, Fisher suppose to scream at them too.
On a team no-one suppose to be discluded of being told what to do to win the game whether its coach or teammate.
The lack of respect for a teammate that does the same thing over n over will get screamed at.
THJ just learned as Shump learned last season, if the coach aint saying anything than FFF ...it.

I dont see Fisher grooming this Knicks team to win in any fashion in which Fisher were tutored to learn how to play winning Ball from PG-Harper and coach Phil.
Fisher has not put together a Starter-Lineup, or Finisher-Lineup that Knicks fans would see on the court the majority of playingtime minutes.
Fisher been mixing and mixing different lineups so much in 24 games there is no way the Knicks team will ever get any chemistry and trust among teammates to coaches.
Fisher coaching is the same design coaching all Knicks fans watch the past 15 season, its called TANKING TANKING TANKING!!!
 

tiger0330

Legend
It's started, the press talking about the do-over option for Melo and maybe him going to Houston or Dallas but my bet is it works better with the Lakers.

NY Times said:
Sometime very soon, Carmelo Anthony and his people will need to sit down with Phil Jackson and his people, which include Coach Derek Fisher and especially the Knicks owner James L. Dolan, to lay some cards on the table. To acknowledge that jokers in Knicks uniforms are running wild and the quick Jackson fix Anthony believed he was signing up for last summer is not happening this season and quite possibly not next season either.

With each passing day, with every dysfunctional defeat, it becomes more apparent that this rebuild could be a multiyear process. How much of what remains of Anthony’s career prime does he wish to devote to it? Would he consider waiving the no-trade clause the Knicks reportedly gave him months ago and be happier moving on, if that could be arranged?

The happy talk of last summer — how Anthony was staying because he believed in Jackson’s system, how the triangle offense would bring sense and stability — has surrendered to the dark reality of a team unschooled in fundamentals at both ends of the floor and not very athletic running up and down it. Forget for the moment what system it plays; Jackson’s first Knicks team flat-out stinks to the tune of 4-20, and how much worse could it be without Anthony, its $124 million centerpiece?

In his latest state-of-the-sinking-union, Jackson spoke of wanting Anthony to expand his game, which presumably meant to grow as the kind of star more invested in making others around him better, more than the scoring machine he has been for 11-plus seasons.

The next night, in New Orleans, Anthony seemed to shrink, not expand, playing 39 minutes, taking 11 official shots and registering not a single assist. He looked and moved indifferently, deferred on offense to a resurgent Amar’e Stoudemire.

That game and Wednesday night’s 109-95 loss to the defending champion Spurs’ B team in San Antonio were obscured by reports of turmoil involving Anthony infecting the Knicks locker room and the news that Anthony was struggling with left knee soreness. He sat out the San Antonio game, in which the Spurs could have played their assistant coach Becky Hammon, the retired franchise icon George Gervin and a couple of dudes from a downtown playground and still dropped 100 on the defensively inept Knicks.

How depressing this must all be for Anthony, who — let’s face it — re-signed with the Knicks because going elsewhere would have cost him tens of millions. Many wondered how much he needed, which is easier to do when it’s not your money. But now Anthony has the deal only the Knicks could give him and he would carry it elsewhere if he were willing to concede that staying in New York from a competitive point of view had been a mistake.

There is, of course, a franchise benefit to such volume losing, the possibility of landing a top lottery prize in what is shaping up as a deep 2015 draft with at least two premier freshman centers in Duke’s Jahlil Okafor and Kentucky’s Karl-Anthony Towns. For that reason, Magic Johnson recently posted on Twitter that he was rooting for his beloved Los Angeles Lakers to lose every night.

“Last year’s draft there were no superstars,” he wrote. “This year there are about 3-4 superstars in college basketball and we need one of them!”

It’s instructive to recall that bottoming out at 20-62 while David Robinson missed the 1996-97 season is what created the Tim Duncan dynasty in San Antonio. But if landing the next Anthony Davis becomes part of the game plan, then so must the understanding that the Knicks would not be getting Duncan, who entered the league as a four-year college player, but a teenager in need of time to grow into his game.

That process would be mitigated by the addition of a premier free agent with the salary cap space the Knicks will have to partner with Anthony. But as Jackson candidly admitted Monday, he correctly worries about how the developing season’s disaster is making the Knicks an unattractive option to potential free agents like LaMarcus Aldridge and Marc Gasol.

Reports of turmoil, dissatisfaction with the triangle and Anthony’s involvement as one of the perpetrators and not a problem-solver cannot help. On top of that, the notion of big-time players lining up to join a 31-year-old Anthony while taking less money from the Knicks than their current teams could offer has always seemed an imaginative stretch.

At 30, and showing signs of wear in part from the heavy minutes he has played and the punishment he has absorbed in New York, Anthony still seems better suited to become part of a more established star core elsewhere. Beyond the physical dynamic, he was never the ideal leading man and does not appear capable of evolving into one either.

What George Karl, his former coach in Denver, told me about Anthony last spring was fair and astute: “I don’t think Melo understands that coming to work with the best attitude every single day is a precious commodity when you’re the best player,” he said. “That’s not the same thing as playing hard. That’s bringing the total package, 100 percent focused on all the little things. Those are rare breeds. Kevin Garnett. Michael Jordan. LeBron didn’t always have it, but he has it now. Melo doesn’t get an A in that department; maybe not much more than a B-minus.”

What Karl meant was that putting Anthony in the most optimal of conditions would involve having a player who may not be as productive and as much a brand-name star, but one who would hold more sway in the daily operation of the team.

Anthony’s team has won fewer games than an Indiana team that at times has played without a single starter from last season’s Eastern Conference finalists. It has lost one more game than the tanking Philadelphia 76ers.
Given all the salary cap considerations and especially with questions about his health, trading Anthony any time soon might not be easy. But should the knee soreness dissipate while the losing continues, shouldn’t the question at least be asked? With his near-max money banked, wouldn’t the possibility of joining Houston or Dallas — to name two teams that wanted him last summer — be a tempting proposition?

Wouldn’t trying to obtain young assets, maybe a draft pick or two, make sense for Jackson and the Knicks as they ponder the increasing likelihood of a long rebuild?

The way they are going, at the rate they are losing, the do-over option for Anthony and the Knicks should at least be on the table.
 
This kind of talk about trading Melo was inevitable with how bad we've been this season. No way it happens mid-season this year. No way Dolan let's our team become without a marketable star asset. Maybe, maybe, at the end of the year, if we get a lottery pick, I can see Dolan allowing PJ to pursue this line of thought.

All this talk about trading Melo, I'm more concerned about us possibly parlaying STAT into assets. I know there has been some talk of resigning him on the cheap at the end of year, but if he is healthy, no way is he going to take the minimum to play on this lousy team. Stat is a perfect asset to trade midseason. He is a productive player who plays the rare role of elite frontcourt scorer, is willing to either start or come off the bench, and he is a huge expiring contract. If we're planning on stinking again next year (which anyone talking about trading Melo is already thinking about), no reason we can't eat money in return if it means getting an extra 1st round pick and some young assets also.

Edit: Ah, forget the Stat trade idea. Finding a team with a 1st round pick and matching salaries that only run through next season, that also wants Stat, is too much to ask from any GM/President
 
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Kiyaman

Legend
you know, I am not so much against trading Melo right now, something is not working out, and the pain of every new season is becoming bigger and harder, come on now, a team with so much money and that big fan base.....what the hell is happening !!!!

Dolan sold $124M worth of Knicks-stock under Phil Jackson nose.
Who the BOSS?
$40M Fisher?
$60M Phil?
$124M Goldenboy?
 
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