Though he’s since backpedelled a bit (“at the end of the day, I would love to be able to sit back and assess the situation and say ‘OK, how can we build going forward?'”), Carmelo Anthony’s comments to the New York Observer’s Rafi Kohan might well redefine the phrase, “ill-advised”. Though the Knicks guard spoke openly about “reinvention” (ie. fewer “Stop Snitching” DVD cameos, more “Sesame Street” appearances), ‘Melo’s media-savvy didn’t extend to a question about his pending free agent status in the summer of 2014 ;
“I want to be a free agent,” Anthony tells me, as our cigars burn close to the nub. “I think everybody in the NBA dreams to be a free agent at least one time in their career. It’s like you have an evaluation period, you know. It’s like if I’m in the gym and I have all the coaches, all the owners, all the GMs come into the gym and just evaluate everything I do. So yes, I want that experience.”
Imagine, just for a minute, that you’re James Dolan. You’ve gotten off the phone with an independent publicist explaining there’s good news and bad news about Pitchfork’s reaction to the new Straight Shot opus (the bad news being they’re not reviewing it…on the other hand, they were really close to giving it a zero). Now you’ve learned a player that cost you 4 members of a promising starting lineup is openly fantasizing about The Free Agent Experience. It’s thankless, shitty moments like these that would make the strongest & smartest amongst us seriously consider selling the basketball and hockey teams, MSG, Newsday, heck, even the Beacon Theater. Given that Dolan isn’t particularly strong or smart, maybe he’ll throw in the towel a little sooner.
So with that mind, thanks, Carmelo. By all means, please continue to the work the selfish/tone-deaf angle at every available opportunity.