Carmelo Anthony is finally a New York Knick. Finally is an understatement, as Carmelo's "Will he, Won't he?" routine hijacked the New York Sports Talk Radio stations and stole every headline of every paper. For the last two weeks it was non-stop prediction and speculation about all things Carmelo. It is a great move for the Knicks, giving them a top-10 player along with a veteran point guard whose contract is set to expire right around the time that Chris Paul and Deron Williams become free agents. The Knicks did have to give up some nice pieces, but they kept their best young piece, rookie Landry Fields, and also got an underrated player in Corey Brewer from the Timberwolves. They are immediately a better team, and more importantly, a hot spot for basketball again. As a New Yorker, and a person actively hoping that the Miami Heat meet fiery endings to each season they employ one LeBron James, I love this move. I did not love, however, the horrible case of hypocrisy the Carmelo coverage illicited.
ESPN did cover the Carmelo coverage, to be sure. They did their due dilligence, leading off SportsCenter with Carmelo updates and had their different basketball minions (also known as analysts) makes some points, but there was a more apparent movement on ESPN and the other main sports networks the last couple of weeks. There was a movement to call the whole thing a headache and Carmelo a drama queen who couldn't make up his mind. Various ESPN personalities claimed that this was dragging and taking way too long and, of course, "can Carmelo make up his mind!!!" I heard this a lot. On ESPN. On SI.com. On WFAN Radio. This made me think: Where was all this concern and drama over the length of the situation when LeBron James was doing the exact same thing for basically a year from the beginning of the 2009-2010 season until his decision.
ESPN had a two hour SportsCenter for the sole purpose of previewing LeBron's Decision which was being broadcasted on ESPN, which was followed by a one hour SportsCenter reacting to the decision. ESPN spent most of the two-hour SportsCenter following the Cavaliers being eliminated by the Celtics talking about LeBron, a man who choked away another top-seed, and his future and not the Celtics and the brilliance of a team that would die for each other. ESPN spent approximately 20,000 hours covering LeBron and his decision, and not only never criticized the ridiculous amount of time spent covering one man's decision, they agreed to have a one hour special to announce news that could have been done in ten seconds. Really, ESPN? Spending two weeks talking five minutes per each SportsCenter about a top-10 player and a possible midseason Mega-Trade is nauseating and too-much, but spending the good parts of May, June and July, and ten hours on the decision day was fine (let alone the whole LeBron thing wreaking of unethical journalism)?
Then there's also the criticism of Carmelo. LeBron was criticized roundly and suffered a major image injury after the self-aggrandizing decision, but until it happened everyone was fine with him hijacking the NBA offseason. It was only until we saw the bastardized hour long special that everyone agreed that the whole thing was a dick move. In Carmelo's case, it looked like many media people thought it was a dick move before he made any decision. The whole time media personalities were begging Carmelo to finish it, to make a decision, for the Nuggets to hurry up the process, for Mikhail Prokhorov to stop trying to force the Knicks into giving up more (a genius move, by the way). Everyone showed impatience when Carmelo was privately going over his options. He didn't hijack the league. His team still did pretty well. However, when it was LeBron, he was basically given carte blanche by everyone until it was over, until we realized what a douche he had been.
Of course, LeBron is the star. LeBron is the icon of the NBA along with Kobe and Melo is in that next tier with Duncan, Durant, Griffin, Nash and others. That said, he's worthy of taking his time to make his decision about where to play. He's worth giving up five minutes per SportsCenter. No one was worth what LeBron did, except for LeBron (in the eyes of LeBron.... and ESPN). I have rarely seen a more obvious example of big-star bias at work and it really shows that unless you are willing to be a lap-dog for the media and self-promote yourself to no end (you know, like creating a twitter moniker called "KingJames") you aren't worth the media's time.
I hope Carmelo wins a ton in New York, and not only because it might be really fun to go to a Knicks game again. I hope Deron Williams or Chirs Paul joins up in two years and they form a more well-suited Big-3 than the one in Miami. That said, Carmelo's decision leads more credence to the theory that the NBA will be hijacked by Super Teams in the near future.
At the current rate, by 2014, the NBA will pretty much have five big teams in the biggest markets, and 25 shit ones. After seeing Wade, Bosh and LeBron pull off what they did the Super Team is really becoming a reality, especially after in Carmelo Anthony's wedding, Chris Paul said in his speech that him, Melo and Stoudamire would be playing together within three years. We are two-thirds of the way there. Top players are basically telling the league that they will only go to big markets, and it will become more relevant when Deron Williams leaves sleepy Utah and Chris Paul leaves New Orleans and Kevin Durant eventually leaves Oklahoma City, and Dwight Howard leaves Orlando for LA. The NBA will become an uncompetitive joke, even to a bigger extent than MLB, because there are no real undervalued skills like there are in baseball and individual players have a bigger impact in basketball. Free Agents just will not go to Utah, or Portland, or Sacramento. And drafted stars on these teams will leave at first sight of "freedom" for their quiet, little town. In the new collective bargaining agreement, the NBA and NBA Players Union better come to some sort of way of solving this issue, some way to keep players on their team, to not turn the NBA into the English Premier League. That said, let's hope that this super team keeps it up.
