It’s easy for LeBron James. He can get the last word with Phil Jackson without saying very much of anything. Oh, there were a few times Wednesday night when he shot a look in Jackson’s general direction while scoring 25 points and pushing the Cavaliers to a 126-94 throttling of the lifeless Knicks at Madison Square Garden.
“It’s the mecca of basketball,” James said. “For me to showcase my talents here is very special.”
Asked if there was extra motivation in his soul, given the public back-and-forth he’d engaged in with Jackson a few weeks ago, he went full-court ambiguous: “I’m motivated by my love of the game, by the process, and by my kids being able to see me play on TV.”
Game. Set. Match.
Carmelo Anthony has no such escape hatch. He’s here, for better or for worse, and so he must listen when Jackson chooses, as he did on Monday, to act like one of the fans at the Garden who buzzes with angst whenever he takes a little too long with the ball in the low post, at the elbow, beyond the 3-point line.
When Jackson talks to CBS Sports Network about this, he is not alone in some get-the-hell-off-my-lawn corner, as he was when he talked about James and his “posse,” and he is not presumably at home, alone, clutching his iPhone and squeezing out tweets lampooning the offensive habits of the Warriors, at the precise moment they became the sport’s most popular show.
No, when Phil says this — “Carmelo, a lot of times, wants to hold the ball longer than — we have a rule: If you hold a pass two seconds, you benefit the defense. So he has a little bit of a tendency to hold it for three, four, five seconds, and then everybody comes to a stop” — it’s like Springsteen belting out “Born to Run” at the Stone Pony.
He is preaching to a large, loud and increasingly agitated choir.
Of course, that doesn’t mean he’s right to do it, or smart to do it. Doesn’t mean he looks any less detached from reality than when he decided to go off on his famously public tangents about James and Pat Riley and Gregg Popovich a few weeks ago.
Because the question I would ask Jackson is the same one I ask any of the army of Melo critics who tend to besiege my inbox every day of basketball season — yes, including Wednesday, the day after Melo’s brilliant 35-point splurge crushed the Heat and allowed the Knicks to move three games over .500 for the first time all year:
Take those 35 points away from that 114-103 victory over Miami. Take the 23 points, six rebounds, and willingness to take so many critical shots away from Melo’s average workday.
Where would you be?
“What Phil said, he said,” Anthony said Wednesday night after hoisting only nine shots and scoring just eight points, clearly overwhelmed both by the Cavaliers and the back-to-back games.
And clearly annoyed to be discussing this at all.
The fact is, Anthony is playing at a level similar to the one he achieved almost every night four years ago, when the Knicks won 54 games and Melo was an absolutely legitimate MVP candidate.
Yes, Kristaps Porzingis is the future. Yes, Derrick Rose has been a genuine surprise at how often he approximates the old version of himself. Yes, Jackson, to his credit, has assembled an intriguing collection of interesting and cost-effective role players that have added a lot of fun to the Knicks (while simultaneously affording Joakim Noah — and Jackson — cover from Noah’s early struggles).
All of that is true. And so is this: none of that matters without Carmelo Anthony existing at the nexus of it all.
So now is the time for the team president to call the star out?
Really?
Now is the time to throw raw meat to the Garden faithful who will clearly never warm to Melo, and nightly implore him to stop shooting so damned much?
(It should be noted, by the way, that Porzingis has been granted immediate immunity for all of this. He spends an awful lot of time pondering. He spends an awful lot of time 25 feet from the basket. And yet if there’s any soundtrack that accompanies all of that, it’s this: “SHOOT IT! SHOOT IT! SHOOT IT!”)
That part is understandable; Porzingis is new, he is young, he is limitless in the imagination. But this part is undeniable: It would be wise to start appreciating what the Knicks have in a fully engaged Anthony, too. Starting at the top.