The Time Has Come For Carmelo Anthony to Shut It Down
By Nick Ziegler
The New York Knicks suffered their 10th straight loss to the Detroit Pistons on Friday night, as they were without a good chunk of their roster including star Carmelo Anthony.
Anthony has been dealing with knee soreness for a while now, and it caused him to miss Friday’s game along with Tim Hardaway Jr., Amar’e Stoudemire, Samuel Dalembert, and Iman Shumpert.
Andrea Bargnani did come off the bench for the Knicks against the Pistons for his second appearance in a game this season. But, his return from his calf injury was short lived, as after just two minutes of play Bargnani headed to the locker room after re-aggravating the same calf injury.
The most important injury concern for the Knicks is obviously Anthony’s, who is in the first year of a newly signed nearly max contract.
New York is now 5-30 on the season, and now the question being raised is when is it time for Anthony to shut it down and get his knee fixed?
“From the conversations I’ve been a part of, I think everybody is smart enough to realize, calendar wise, timing wise, that there may come a point that that’s the decision that needs to be made,” Fisher said Friday. “But [we realize] that we can’t force Carmelo to that point just yet.”
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Anthony seems to want to be out there trying to help make the Knicks respectable this season, but with him playing they still aren’t winning games, and if he continues to push the knee it won’t get any better according to the Knicks’ medical staff.
“We can’t unilaterally just say, ‘Hey, you know, you can’t play for the rest of the season because of A, B and C,'” Fisher said. “I think our medical staff, our training staff, continue to have conversations with him about where he is. He’s conversing with us about how he’s feeling, what the symptoms are. And so as each day kind of unfolds, decisions are being made. It’s not something that we’re just kind of stepping back and saying, ‘Carmelo, you kind of tell us when you don’t feel like playing anymore.'”
It’s clearly a very frustrating situation for the Knicks and Anthony, as losing as many games as they have already this season, especially in New York, is never a fun thing.
With the total disappointment that the Knicks have been this season, it seems like the smart thing to do with an eye on the future is to have Anthony sit for the remainder of the season. It would lead to young players like Hardaway Jr., and Cleanthony Early getting some extra minutes at the wing, helping them both develop. Most importantly though, it would give Anthony time to get his knee healthy so that he is 100 percent for next season and this doesn’t turn into a lingering thing that the Knicks have to deal with for the duration of his contract.