Carmelo Anthony: Judge, jury and executioner

By Adam Cancryn

Faced with a choice between the team's well-being and their star player's happiness, the New York Knicks made it clear that Carmelo Anthony is one that really runs the franchise.

Carmelo Anthony has compiled a long list of accomplishments during his time in the NBA. He's got the points, the rebounds, the assists. He's got the extensive catalog of highlight-reel dunks and dagger threes. But where there's a huge hole in his resume, what he's been missing all along, is a coaching win. Carmelo Anthony has never won a game as a coach, and in fact, he's never even had the experience of donning a suit, drawing up the plays and leading his own team.

So with that in mind, it's puzzling that when confronted with conflicting philosophies on how best to run the team, the New York Knicks sided with Anthony over Mike D'Antoni, a longtime coach and the man who orchestrated the prettiest and most coherent offense Madison Square Garden has seen in more than a decade.

But that's precisely what the Knicks did when they gave D'Antoni the boot this past week. Facing a situation that came down to system versus style, long-term success versus short-term returns, coach versus star player, the organization stuck with their money maker. And as a result, they sent a message that the fundamental coach-player hierarchy is dead.

That the Knicks kept Anthony and canned D'Antoni is no surprise, yet the mere fact that it was a simple choice underscores the shift that has taken place within the team. Where team decisions traditionally flow from owner to general manager to coach to players, for the Knicks that pecking order has been superseded by their star player. Anthony plays the system he wants, with whom he wants and under the coach that he wants. Anyone who gets in the way of that will soon find themselves out of a job.

The Knicks aren't the only team held prisoner by their star. Portland Blazers players Raymond Felton and Jamal Crawford organized a "mutiny" to get their coach fired. Los Angeles Lakers coach Mike Brown is on the hot seat because Kobe Bryant reportedly doesn't like him. The Orlando Magic effectively castrated their entire management team when they told Dwight Howard he could hire and fire coaches and GMs if he stayed with the team.

Yet while those are all egregious cases in their own right, it is clear that every one of those star players makes his team better when he's on the floor. When it comes to the Knicks, there is more than half a season worth of evidence that Anthony is a "star" only in reputation. With him at the helm, the team is stagnant. The offense is awkward and passive, and the defense nonexistent. Unsurprisingly, it's translated into little success, especially during Anthony's latest stint.

D'Antoni, meanwhile, spent much of his tenure cobbling together bit players, plugging them into his system, and churning out something resembling success. He turned bench players like Danilo Gallinari and Wilson Chandler into valuable assets, and during Anthony's absence this season, had the Knicks in playoff contention with a starting five led by the Erie Bayhawks former point guard. It wasn't a championship team by any stretch; only a select few teams are in today's NBA. But it was a squad whose special brand of organized chaos could steal series win in the first round of the playoffs.

That on-court product doesn't matter to this organization, though. That much was made clear over the past few weeks, when Anthony sauntered back into the starting rotation, decided he didn't much like all this non-Carmelo centered play, and did the equivalent of threatening to take his ball and go home if changes weren't made. D'Antoni and the rest of the team would have to break from the unselfish style that made them the NBA's darlings for the past month and adapt to Anthony's tedious, ball-stopping system, or risk upsetting the man responsible for putting fans in seats and lining the owners' pockets. The Knicks, forever putting profits and hype over wins and pride, obliged.

So now we are left with a team that looks great on paper and miserable by any other measure. A briefly magical season is in shambles, and a Knicks team that had clear direction just a year ago is once again rudderless. But at least Carmelo is happy. And in the end, this organization has made it clear that that's all that matters.

Adam Cancryn is an editor and co-founder of Began in '96.