Carmelo Anthony took it to social media to express his feelings regarding Phil Jackson’s recent comments.
Phil Jackson isn’t exactly a “behind the scenes” President of Basketball Operations. That became even more evident in an interview with CBS Sports Network’s We Need To Talk:
“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,” Jackson said. “So he has a little bit of a tendency to hold it for three, four, five seconds, and then everybody comes to a stop.”
These comments led to Carmelo Anthony nearly walking out of his postgame interview on Wednesday when he was bombarded with questions about Phil’s criticism. Carmelo broke his silence Thursday with two posts that made it clear how he felt about the comments made by Jackson:
It seemed as though Anthony was taking the higher road and not letting Phil’s comments phase him. Melo, however, was not done with the topic. According to Stefan Bondy of NY Daily News, Melo had a little more to add Friday:
“At the end of the day we’re playing good basketball,” Anthony said. “That’s the only thing that matters at this point. So any negativity that’s coming towards me or towards the team, I don’t think we need it at this point.””I feel like we’re playing good basketball, and just to have a temporary black cloud over our heads,” “I don’t know when the comments were made or the gist of them, I just know something was said.”
Anthony seems bothered by the comments, or at least the timing of them. With the Knicks at 12-10 and playing better basketball then they have in recent years, he seems to have a point. Melo isn’t exactly playing bad either, averaging 22.4 points per game with a .436 shooting percentage.
Maybe Phil should wait until the Knicks are falling under .500 to be critical of the best player on the team, rather than being the distraction that causes it to happen. It seems as if Jackson has come down with a really bad case of foot in mouth disease lately.