There is no pretense attached to this, no feel-good heart-tugging element, and you know something? That’s for the best. This is about business, about cold-blooded and clear-minded commerce. Carmelo Anthony gets the best available deal. The Knicks get the best available player.
Cold. Clear. Concise.
Anthony returns to New York, and that is the best possible place the Knicks could start, the best possible foundation piece around which Phil Jackson can build. If he is a Knick solely because of money, that isn’t a sin, it’s a reality. In a basketball world minus a salary cap, this is the kind of transaction the Knicks would specialize in, using financial might to throw the fear of Yankees into the rest of the NBA.
So there is no need for the Knicks to apologize, and less reason for Anthony to apologize. Business. All business. For Anthony, it is the chance to make the kind of forever score an elite career entitles you to; for the Knicks it puts in place an elite player that, in a perfect world, and in Jackson’s world, will attract another elite player next summer when there will be cap space to be doled out.
Is that cynical? Jaded? Maybe it is. It probably is. In a new NBA world where we have now seen LeBron James summon his inner Sensitive Man, it may seem a chilly, boardroom move. It is. And it doesn’t matter.
Jackson, who knows the value of stars in a championship blueprint, has his foundation star. If it took him a while to acknowledge the value of that in his public statements, it has been increasingly clear how much he covets Melo in the context and the fabric of what his vision is for the Knicks.
Melo? Yes, had he decided to be as altruistic as possible, he could have left up to $50 million on the table, gone to Chicago and had a far better chance to get to the Finals this year, especially in an Eastern Conference landscape tuned upside down Friday — one where the Heat are no longer the big, bad wolves on the block, one where the Cavaliers may be someday, just not yet.
Those who never are inclined to give Anthony the benefit of the doubt surely will frown and furrow their brows and say “See? It was always about the money.”
Of course it was about the money.
But it’s also about the Knicks, and about the best way Jackson can turn this into a viable championship product. His first trade with the Mavericks was promising, but Jose Calderon, the prime import, suddenly becomes 50 percent more intriguing as player partnering with Melo in the coming triangle world, as opposed to the prime component.
Now it’s on Jackson to make the moves necessary — this summer, next summer, every day in between — to strengthen the roster and summon the talent necessary to go where this needs to go. And also on Melo to be the kind of player that will attract his future running mate, whoever that may be. After all, one of the unique aspects of James is how many accomplished NBA players want to be attracted to that flame, knowing it’s the best pathway to the Finals and beyond.
That’s what the Knicks are buying. And that’s what Melo has to be offering. All business. All commerce. Cynical? Absolutely. Jaded? Of course. No tears of joy, no emotional overload, no essay to make the poets weep. The player needed the money, the team needed the player. Cold business in cold type. And precisely what both sides needed.