When Carmelo Anthony and Amar’e Stoudemire first began sharing the bright lights of Madison Square Garden together, they were supposed to be the next great NBA duo. Instead, injuries and a cataclysmic failure of their individual games to mesh with one another turned the dynamic into just another “What if?” Now, a couple of years later, Stoudemire has identified a third key reason why he thinks the tandem disappointed: mismanagement by the Knicks coaching staff.
“I don’t think we had enough opportunities to play together,” said Stoudemire, now of the Miami Heat, in advance of their showdown with the Knicks on Monday night per Marc Berman of the New York Post. “I moved to the bench and [became the] sixth, seventh man. When I was in the game, Melo, he was out of the game and vice versa. When we did play together, we showed some flashes of what we could do on the pick-and-roll.
“I don’t think that pick-and-roll offense between Melo and I was ever taken advantage of, which we could have,” the six-time All-Star continued. “The way he shoots the ball, handles the ball from the outside and the way I attack the rim, it could’ve been a pretty good combination.”
Stoudemire went on to place the blame squarely on the ex-Knicks coaches: “I don’t think the coaching staff at the time really bought into that. At times we could’ve taken advantage of our opportunity a lot more. It wasn’t up to Melo and I. It was up to the coaching staff to figure that part out. We could never get the right system to figure that part out.”
The Knicks, who were under Mike D’Antoni and Mike Woodson for the entirety of Stoudemire and Anthony’s time together, did largely fail to run many coherent offensive sets for the two other than the wasteland of Carmelo isolations and stagnant Stoudemire post-ups. But the real root of the issue was that the duo could never stay healthy, particularly Stoudemire who missed 110 games in his time with the Knicks.
Stoudemire has already commented on the failed experiment with Anthony in the recent past, and rest assured that he’s not the only one disappointed that things played out the way they did, for whatever reasons. The entire basketball community weeps for what could have been as well, STAT.
H/T NBA Reddit
