A report from the NY Daily News via Frank Isola states that after weeks of speculation and debate, Carmelo Anthony will re-sign with the New York Knicks for the Maximum salary of $129 Million dollar contract for 5 years. From a financial standpoint this obviously was the best possible scenario for Carmelo Anthony since there was no other team that could offer him that amount of money for that duration of time. However, from a competitive basketball standpoint it sort of feels like Carmelo (if the report stands true) is deciding to play out the rest of his prime years with a re-building team (the Knicks) and a rookie head coach who was playing in the NBA this past year; Derek Fisher. How are the New York Knicks even a playoff contender with their roster currently constructed? The New York Knicks just traded arguably their second best player Tyson Chandler, with Andrea Bargnani as his replacement. Furthermore, a lot of the New York Knicks money is still tied up in Amare Stoudemaire and as we have all noticed within the past two years, Amare, at this point in his career, is not playing up to the level of his current Max-level contract. At this point in time, unless Tim Hardaway Jr. & Iman Shumpert turn into All-Star caliber players; the New York Knicks as currently constructed just don’t have enough players to make noise in the playoffs. Moreover, their presence will dilute the Eastern conference. Given that Caremlo is about to turn 30, he doesn’t exactly have a ten year “Championship Window” like the very fresh/young OKC Thunder. So why did Carmelo Anthony decide to re-sign with the New York Knicks? Was it strictly just a money decision? Maybe his wife LaLa Anthony was not willing to up and move their whole family out of New York just so Melo could go to a completely different state and team to better his chances of winning. Or maybe Carmelo truly believes that Phil Jackson is still the “Zen Master” and can somehow make magic to acquire the necessary talent around Carmelo to legitimately compete for a championship. No worries, we will find out soon enough, more details to come soon!
–JRC
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