Baron Davis’s tenure with the New York Knicks was brief and injury-plagued, but it roughly coincided with their most recent period of sustained success, and as he watches the organization today, he doesn’t see much.
Davis criticized the Knicks organization for having “no real plan” and admitted he feels for Carmelo Anthony as the franchise trudges toward another rebuild.
“I always feel for Melo. That’s my teammate, my brother,” Davis told Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News. “Melo is a dude who wants to be in New York. It’s different. I think that when we were, the two years I was there, I thought we had the people and chemistry around him, and personalities to let Melo be Melo. When you allow Melo to be himself, then he becomes one of the most dangerous weapons in the league. And everyone else around the team takes the responsibility of making sure that weapon is utilized. And I think the last couple years we went to the playoffs, we started to develop that.
“Once we got over the ‘Linsanity,’ it was like, we still know who the weapon is. Like, and the team was there. We were closer than we’ve ever been to really building something. And then it kind of all went downhill.”
Davis said he thinks the triangle is obsolete, but there are principles worth teaching. Team president Phil Jackson is, in his mind, simply dealing with a language barrier with the players.
“They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but you definitely don’t want to teach a new dog some old a– tricks when everybody’s learning all the new stuff,” Davis said. “So it’s just a matter of, how do you get the dog to learn the new tricks but giving them the old principles to understand it?”
Anthony has admitted that the season is wearing on him. It’s hard to blame him. There isn’t much about what Davis is saying that doesn’t ring true.
