Carmelo Anthony took small pay cut to help Knicks

Even though Carmelo Anthony was completely deserving of a max contract from the New York Knicks, team president Phil Jackson tried to guilt his star player into taking a less money.

Phil was trying to challenge ‘Melo and make him feel greedy for taking max money instead of taking less in order to help the team. When faced with the threat of losing Anthony, though, Jackson changed his tune and told the forward the team would be offering him max money.

Luckily for the Knicks, Anthony didn’t take all that he could; he took a small pay cut to give the Knicks more flexibility in 2015. Instead of the maximum $129 million over five seasons, the NY Post’s Marc Berman says ‘Melo will be paid between $122 and $123 million.

Here are the details of the discount ‘Melo gave the Knicks via the NY Post:

Jackson confirmed The Post’s reports Anthony structured the deal to give the Knicks more cap space in 2015. It is believed he didn’t take his annual 7.5 percent raise in Year 2 and may have taken a tiny pay decrease. Under collective bargaining agreement rules, a player can receive as high as a 7.5 percent pay raise annually.

“He did exactly what we kind of asked him to do,’’ Jackson said. “Give us a break in the early part of the contract when we have some wiggle room — hopefully big enough wiggle room — next year when we can exploit it.”

Anthony’s sacrifice in Year 2 likely opens up about $2 million more in cap space for 2015, but the rest of his annual wages suffer by not taking the raise.

Taking a $6 million discount probably doesn’t sound like much when you’re due to earn $122-123 million, but it’s still significant. That amount could be the difference between signing a player and not.

‘Melo isn’t exactly sacrificing money to play for a winner — he would have signed elsewhere if that were his priority — but it still should be recognized that he took less than what he could have and deserved.