Former New York Knicks forward Amar’e Stoudemire wishes that the team showed patience and signed Carmelo Anthony in the Summer of 2011.
The 2010-11 campaign seems like decades ago for New York Knicks fans, and if you remember that season, you remember feeling both optimism and happiness. Both moods are ones that fans haven’t experienced for quite some time, being that the last time the Knicks made the playoffs was in 2013.
During that campaign, the Knicks traded for fellow New Yorker Carmelo Anthony in February. The blue and orange shipped Wilson Chandler, Raymond Felton, Danilo Gallinari, and Timofey Mozgov to the Nuggets for the All-Star. It was a move that propelled the Knicks to make the postseason that year.
Nevertheless, former forward Amar’e Stoudemire wished the team had actually waited to sign Melo in the Summer.
“I built a great relationship and friendship with Wilson Chandler, [Danilo] Gallinari, Raymond Felton, Timofey Mozgov…all those guys became my proteges,” Stoudemire mentioned on the Big Apple Buckets podcast, produced by the New York Post. “I loved being instrumental with their development. So it was tough to see them go.”
“And with Carmelo coming in, obviously he’s a Hall of Fame player, and to have him with us was massive, but I truly think looking back if we could have acquired him in the offseason and kept those players, then we would have been a much better team.”
The Knicks ended up as the six seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs. At the time, the postseason appearance was the ballclub’s first since the 2003-04 campaign. Nonetheless, they fell to the Boston Celtics in the opening round in four games.
Stoudemire parted from the Knicks in 2015, while New York shipped Melo to Oklahoma City prior to the 2017-18 campaign.