Carmelo Anthony has become accustomed to losing since joining the New York Knicks. He’s not interested in doing in on purpose.
New York Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony is used to losing. Despite tremendous individual success, his six previous seasons in New York have garnered just one playoff series win. All that losing has made the idea of tanking impossible for Melo to accept.
Anthony told Marc Berman of The New York Post that tanking is fundamentally unacceptable to him.
“It’s a terrible way to think,’’ Anthony said at Friday’s morning shootaround at Wells Fargo Center. “No player in any sports should be thinking about that.’’
Anthony expressed a commonly held belief by players. That losing for a better draft pick may benefit the fans or the organization, but he is the ones playing the games.
“As a player, you always disagree with that,’’ Anthony said. “We’re the ones out there playing, trying to win basketball games. From the fans’ perspective, just tank or lose games, I don’t know how you do that. We’re going to try to lose the game or [the last] 15, 20 games, we’re going to figure out ways to lose and tank the season and start thinking about draft pieces?”
The only way the Knicks could tank would be to bench Anthony. He leads the team in scoring, shots, usage, and win shares all by a wide margin.
