It’s All-Star weekend in his town and this is the time for Carmelo Anthony to step up his game and really make an impact for the Knicks.
He can do that by making positive recruiting pitches to such fellow All-Stars as Kevin Durant, Marc Gasol, Paul Millsap and Jimmy Butler, and that’s among Anthony’s top priorities.
While Phil Jackson can’t talk to those future free agents because they’re under contract and that would amount to tampering, any of those players would look great in a Knicks’ uniform. And that’s the message Anthony wants to send this weekend, in the lead-up to the Knicks making official offers to one or more free agents starting on July 1.
“That is a big moment - Sunday in the All-Star Game,” Anthony told reporters this week. “So the Garden will be lit up, it will be bright. There will be a lot of people in there. It will be loud and it will be exciting. So for other players to see that, I am pretty sure that will be impressive.”
But the electricity of the Garden can only go so far in generating positive buzz and helping the Knicks’ crucial recruiting efforts. Anthony and Jackson will have to go a long way to overcome some factors that could end up working against the Knicks if they try to land free agents this summer, or if they make a run at Durant in 2016.
No matter where they direct their recruiting efforts, the Knicks will have to convince players that Jackson has a vision for building a contender - one that he can pull off as a first-time NBA executive. The free-agent candidates will want to know that Derek Fisher, who has been overmatched during his disastrous rookie season, can still develop into a big-time head coach.
Potential candidates had better want to play in the Triangle Offense, because Fisher will continue to run it. And they will have to fully buy in on Anthony - believing that he’ll not just recover from his current knee troubles and probable upcoming surgery but that they'll also be able to win big with him as a teammate.
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"I’ll base my decision off what I see - where the team is, will I be able to grow with the team, how is the coach, and the community," Millsap, the Atlanta Hawks forward, told me during the Friday player media sessions. "There are a lot of things that factor into it, including who’s building the team and the owner. Yes, those are factors I will look at."
Knicks fans have to remember: Anthony can say only so much during his recruiting efforts.
"The whole recruiting thing can be overblown," Miami’s Dwyane Wade told me as he held court, across the way from Millsap in a Sheraton Midtown ballroom. "It can certainly help when you can talk to a player about the organization and the city they’d be coming to. But there are a lot of players in this room who I called and texted to come to Miami and they didn’t come."
Of course, the one major player Wade helped recruit and didn’t have to do a big sales job on was LeBron James, back in 2010 when James decided to take his talents to South Beach. Unlike Anthony, who is not close friends with any of the prospective free agents, James and Wade had been very close for years before they both reached free-agent status five years ago. It also didn’t hurt Miami’s chances that the Heat had already won a title with Wade winning Finals MVP honors in 2006, which proved to James that team president Pat Riley was capable of building another championship-level squad.
In other words, Anthony and Jackson can’t offer what Wade and Riley could offer to James.
"I didn’t have to recruit LeBron to come to Miami," Wade told me. "I didn’t have to recruit LeBron to want to play with one of his best friends. I had that advantage. The only thing we had to make sure of was how all of the money worked. We were able to do that and it worked."
Did it ever. Two championship rings and four straight trips to the Finals bear Wade out.
"But in the end," he concluded, "guys are going to make the decisions they’re most comfortable with. They might have friends somewhere else, or an alliance with another team somewhere else. But recruiting helps in some cases."
In the Knicks’ case, they can only hope that Anthony's recruiting makes for a genuine impact.
Longtime New York columnist Mitch Lawrence continues to write about pro basketball, as he’s done for the last 22 years. His columns for NBCNewYork.com on the Knicks, Brooklyn Nets and the NBA, along with other major sports, appear twice weekly. Follow him on Twitter @Mitch _ Lawrence.
