Immediately following the All Star Game, Frank Isola of the Daily News reported that the Knicks and Amare Stoudemire reached an agreement to buyout the remaining portion of the former All Star forward’s contract making him a free agent.
His stay in New York wasn’t a pleasant one. It never is when a player is given that kind of money and only brings one playoff series win. You don’t have statues built in your honor in New York with that kind of resume. But you’d be a fool to look back on Stoudemire’s time and think it was all on him.
The problem with Amare’s time in NY is the problem with every big name athlete that comes to NY: they are viewed as saviors. Brought to the big city to save us from the shackles of irrelevance. It was supposed to be Lebron in 2010. That’s back when we all were under the ruse that it was actually a fair game- nobody saw the hand Pat Riley was holding. When the smoke cleared, it was Amare Stoudemire standing in front of MSG screaming the Knicks were back while running to NY so he could sign his 5 year $100M un-insured contract.
The Knicks blew up everything for 2010 in hopes of getting Lebron in a room and convincing him to come to NY. They thought the big city angle would play. They thought they could get him to come and be the leader the city needed for its big basketball revival. Of course Lebron had just finished a 6 year tour around that debacle and knew the weight of carrying it along without talent around him would be like groundhog’s day elsewhere. He wisely chose Miami and now we know him as a champion.
Saviors don’t come cheap, and sometimes when you impulse shop you buy something for far more than you should’ve paid for it and add on guilt to the price tag. Knicks fans looked at Amare with the same look any kid would give you if you got them a Nintendo 64 when they asked for a PS4. Not only isn’t it the same thing but its also an insult to the intelligence of the kid to insinuate it’s the same thing.
Everything since that day has been one basketball disaster after another. Trading all the depth we had for Carmelo when it was a well known fact that he would’ve came to NY anyway. Using the Amnesty clause on Chauncey Billups rather than addressing Amare’s contract then. Even the 2012 season, one in which the Knicks won the division, 54 games and coined a phrase #Knickstape (no seriously that’s been the best thing to come out of the last 5 years) ended with the Knicks beaten by the Pacers and back to square peg in the round hole.
Knick fans reeling since that day look at his uninsured contract and the subsequent decision to team him with Carmelo Anthony and permanently clog the toilet with two untradeable contracts which effectively destroyed any cap space to supplement the talent around them, look at Amare and blame him. Somehow Amare’s at fault for all of this.
The Knicks were done in by decisions they made. Don’t blame Amare for taking a contract nobody else was offering him. Don’t blame Amare for the Knicks foolhardy decision to trade for Carmelo when it was all but assured that he was coming during free agency. Don’t blame Amare for being injury prone and don’t blame anyone but the Knicks for not knowing what they were getting when they got it. He came with a huge buyer beware sticker on him and the Knicks went forward with the purchase anyway.
Fact is, the Knicks, the media, and the fan base did everything they could to alienate him and he took it all without ever blaming anyone outside of his own person. He didn’t bring a championship to NY. He wasn’t even a major player when the Knicks had their most success and won 54 games. He was a $20M bit player and yet, when he yelled that the Knicks were back, you believed it for a moment.
The organization has been selling us this savior business for a while and the stale smell of irrelevance has been the cue that it hasn’t worked. Next season we’re going right back into the superstars want to come to NY business. We read a few clips of how everyone loves coming to NY. I’m sure they do love coming to NY. They bring their family, catch a show, walk into MSG and then lay an ass kicking on the Knicks and laugh their way out. Stars don’t want to come to NY. They don’t want the burden or the bother of a fan base with unrealistic expectations and a front office peddling used goods as brand new hardware in hopes of procuring another dollar. It’s a two way stream of crap and Amare like stars before him are caught in the middle.
I don’t feel bad for the Knick fan. I bought into Phil Jackson just like the rest of you. Too foolish to see the truth: what the hell did he know about putting a team together? His recent mea culpa about his experiment gone wrong read like a familiar script. Another big name brought in to run the same old game. The sad part is we keep buying it as fans. Then our anger gets directed at the players. Amare is exactly who we thought he was. We were just too stupid to buy into it. Phil Jackson is a great coach, but a GM he is not. Not until he proves it. Yes, he still has time to prove it and while its all good and well to admit your shortcomings, its not an easy truth to face.
The Knicks have been selling us a fantasy for a while now. Phil Jackson being the latest in a series of saviors, brought to Gotham to save us from bad basketball. But with Amare, we knew what we were getting. He was an injury risk. He was a one-dimensional player. He wasn’t a build everything around him type of athlete. In fact, the athleticism that once was his calling card, was all but a distant memory. What remains is the fantasy. The tall tales of a man brought to NY to save basketball at the mecca. But who’s gonna save New York from itself?
acebook
witter
The Lazy Eye of Sports 