This is no way for Carmelo Anthony to get his bulletproof legacy.
Anthony is suffering from back spasms and doesn’t figure to be able to play tonight in Dallas or Friday night in Oklahoma City when the Knicks conclude their three-game road trip.
For the Knicks’ scoring star, the setback couldn’t have come at a worse time, for the team or himself.
Anthony’s injury came on the heels of a recent story in ESPN The Magazine that went into great detail about how Anthony is now in the midst of trying to be more than a basketball player. He wants to grow his off-court brand and has enlisted all kinds of people to help him get there. And to top it off, he’s told those folks, “what I really want is a bulletproof legacy.’’
Whatever you’re paying those people, ‘Melo, you’re throwing away your money.
Because here’s the thing that Anthony needs to remember about how he’ll be viewed, long after he takes off his No. 7 Knicks jersey for the final time. He’ll determine his legacy by what he does on the court for
Phil Jackson and Derek Fisher. If he wants to be known for “being a visionary, for being truly great," as he stated in the ESPN story, it all starts on the basketball court.
Winning trumps everything. Winning a title in New York will make him bulletproof.
But all these grand plans won’t mean a thing if he can’t dispel the notion that he’s a wonderful, talented regular-season scorer who always comes up short in the playoffs.
But everything is on hold now after Anthony came down with a bad back in Houston when the Knicks couldn’t stop James Harden down the stretch.
Afterward, Amar’e Stoudemire told everyone within earshot that the favorable treatment Harden got from the refs was as if, “an angel came down, calling calls for him.’’
But that same angel was nowhere near the Knicks bench, not when they saw Anthony suffer the kind of injury that could wreck a season and even a rebuilding plan.
This past summer Jackson had the opportunity to take the Knicks down to the studs by passing on Anthony, letting him walk away. But the Zen Master knows that as much of a ball-stopper as Anthony has always been -- the antithesis of a Triangle-friendly player, as you’ll ever find -- he would still be better off in the short term with ‘Melo because few can put the ball in the basket like him.
So Anthony’s “Melo Over America’’ free agency tour turned out to be just a tease. The Rockets were one team he passed on and they seem to be doing just fine without him.
The Mavs were another team ‘Melo visited, to listen to their recruiting pitch. But they’ve also been more than OK with Mike Woodson’s old sparring partner, Tyson Chandler, settling right back in with Dirk Nowitzki, and reminding people of what the two of them accomplished in 2011 when the Mavs stunned LeBron James and the Heat to win the title.
The Bulls, the other team that offered Anthony something the Knicks could not -- the chance to go deep in the playoffs right away and perhaps contend for the title in 2015 -- have their own problems. Namely, getting Derrick Rose to stay on the court.
So it doesn’t look like anyone is really missing ‘Melo now, save the Lakers.
But the Knicks will sure miss him now.
“We have to figure out a way to make up that 27, 28 points a game and his presence, not just his scoring,’’ J.R. Smith told reporters after the team practiced on Tuesday in Dallas. “His presence in the locker room and presence on the court.’’
Anthony’s presence, so far, has not meant much, as far as the team’s record goes. They’ve lost 11 of their first 15 games, going for the first 13 games without Jose Calderon, their top playmaker.
But Knick fans should be concerned, above and beyond the early struggles, and not just because
Anthony has had some problems with a knee and now with this back injury. They should really be concerned that Anthony seems to be more consumed with what he creates off the court than what he does on it.
Who goes and hires branding experts, anyway? But whoever these people are, they’ve told him what he wants to hear, that he should want to become “a cultural icon, a taste-maker.’’
Frankly, Anthony needs to stop thinking about those grandiose plans and start concentrating on getting this Knicks season turned around, before they lose so much ground that they won’t be able to make the playoffs.
But it’s difficult to turn anything around when your team is out on the floor and you’re back in the locker room, getting treatment.
You can’t get a bulletproof legacy flat on your back, on the trainers table.
Longtime New York columnist Mitch Lawrence continues to write about pro basketball, as he’s done for the last 21 years. His columns for NBCNewYork.com on the Knicks, Brooklyn Nets and the NBA, along with other major sports, will appear twice weekly. Follow him on Twitter
