Baron Davis talked to Stefan Bondy of The New York Daily News about some of the problems with the New York Knicks.
Everyone seems to have an opinion on Carmelo Anthony, Phil Jackson, and the chaotic state of the New York Knicks. Add ex-Knick Baron Davis turned TNT broadcaster to the list. Davis played 29 games for New York in 2011-12, his final NBA season.
The former All-Star point guard told Stefan Bondy of The New York Daily News he thinks the franchise has “no real plan” and sympathized with the plight of former teammate Carmelo Anthony.
“I always feel for Melo. That’s my teammate, my brother,” Davis, a former All-NBA selection who played just 29 games with the Knicks due to injuries, told the Daily News. “Melo is a dude who wants to be in New York. It’s different. I think that when we were, the two years I was there, I thought we had the people and chemistry around him, and personalities to let Melo be Melo. When you allow Melo to be himself, then he becomes one of the most dangerous weapons in the league. And everyone else around the team takes the responsibility of making sure that weapon is utilized. And I think the last couple years we went to the playoffs, we started to develop that. Once we got over the ‘Linsanity,’ it was like, we still know who the weapon is. Like, and the team was there. We were closer than we’ve ever been to really building something. And then it kind of all went downhill.”
Anthony’s career took a downward spiral after Phil Jackson signed on to be President of the team in 2014 and brought in his outdated triangle offense. The Knicks are 76-157 during Jackson’s tenure.
The nine-time All-Star hasn’t thrived in the offense that Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan did. During Jackson’s tenure, Anthony is shooting just 43.7 percent from the field, and his scoring has slipped to 22.8 points per game.
Davis described the triangle offense in the same vein as most. A symptom of the older generation of the NBA failing to communicate a message to the youngsters.
“They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but you definitely don’t want to teach a new dog some old a– tricks when everybody’s learning all the new stuff,” Davis said. “So it’s just a matter of, how do you get the dog to learn the new tricks but giving them the old principles to understand it?”
In other words, “a language barrier between young and old, old and new.”
Davis recently participated in the NBA Celebrity All-Star Game after spending last season attempting a comeback in the D-league.
