NEW YORK -- How does a franchise rebuild around a 30-year-old superstar in his 12th season in the NBA?
That’s a question many around the NBA have wondered since Phil Jackson signed Carmelo Anthony to a $124 million contract instead of rebuilding the New York Knicks from scratch.
Well, Derek Fisher shed some light Sunday on the Knicks’ approach to rebuilding around Carmelo.
“I think we owe it to Carmelo to do it the right way,” Fisher said before the Knicks’ win over the Los Angeles Lakers. “He just signed a contract for five years, he’s 30 years old. We don’t have 10 years to figure this out. So, for us, we’re right in the middle of, ‘We need to do some things right away, as soon as we can.’ But at the same time, not necessarily put ourselves in the same position we’ve been in the last few years where we try to get a get a bunch of guys that don’t have favorable contracts that don’t allow you to plan for the future.”
“The time is now,” Anthony said Sunday after scoring 31 points to lead New York over Los Angeles. “The time is now to kind of start building for the future. I don’t think we can wait. Not just for my sake, just in general, I think the time is now. The window is now. I think we’ve got to take advantage of that.”
New York has a first-round pick this June and is expected to have upward of $30 million to spend in free agency.
Players such as Marc Gasol, LaMarcus Aldridge, Rajon Rondo, Goran Dragic, Draymond Green, Greg Monroe and Wes Matthews are expected to be available.
The Knicks will have enough money to sign a player to a maximum contract. But they may not break the bank this summer, instead opting to save cap space for the summer of 2016 when Kevin Durant is available.
That would mean taking a more patient approach than past Knick regimes.
“I understand our fans and the city wanting to hurry up and get to a championship,” Fisher said. “We obviously want to win. That’s what we’ve done in our past. [But] we still have to be smart.”
Melo turns back the clock: Two of Anthony’s 31 points came on a one-handed alley-oop off of a Jason Smith feed late in the first half.
He glared at his own bench after the dunk, sending a message to his younger teammates.
“They been joking around with me the last couple of games, [saying] I’m old,” Anthony said. “Last game, or game before, I had a couple of dunks. They said they haven’t seen that before, they haven’t seen that in a long time. We had this conversation before the game today. So it was just one of those moments where I had to look at the bench and let them know that I still got it.”
Mission accomplished.
Fisher’s battles with Kobe: Lakers coach Byron Scott was a veteran at the tail end of his NBA career when Kobe Bryant and Derek Fisher entered the league as rookies in 1996.
He recalled on Sunday watching Fisher and Bryant battle against one another in full-court one-on-one games.
“Yeah, I used to sit on the side with ice on my knees watching. It was fun to watch because neither one of them was giving an inch. … You could tell they were going to be great friends. Over the years, obviously Kobe respects him tremendously.”
Question: Do you think the Knicks should try to build a title contender this summer or should they take a more long-term approach?