Mike D’Antoni’s unsuccessful tenure with the New York Knicks ended rather abruptly in 2012, and it has long been assumed that Carmelo Anthony had a lot to do with the coach’s departure. We now have confirmation of that.
In a lengthy feature written about him for ESPN The Magazine, D’Antoni admitted that he resigned from the Knicks after Anthony told the team they needed to choose between the star player and coach.
“I just went in and quit,” D’Antoni said.
Anthony wasn’t a fan of D’Antoni’s system, which centers around the pick-and-roll and was highly successful with Steve Nash and the Phoenix Suns. The system has found equal success this year with the Houston Rockets and James Harden, who averaged a career-high 11.2 assists per game in his first year under D’Antoni.
In 2012, Jeremy Lin became a household name because of his success running D’Antoni’s offense. There were rumblings that Anthony resented all the attention Lin was getting. D’Antoni mentioned that in an appearance on The Vertical podcast last year.
“So now it’s like, what are we going to do?” he recalled, via Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News. “We could see how to go and I didn’t know how to get there and with losing again and you’re trying to prod them and you’re trying to tell ‘em to play harder and all the coach’s speak and communication just like deteriorated.
“(Carmelo and I) don’t have a bad relationship. I speak to him. He’s a good guy. But I had one vision that I wanted him to play one way. He wanted to go the other way. I couldn’t get to my way.”
Anthony has a reputation for not getting along with coaches, and no one has shed more light on that than George Karl. Fortunately for current Knicks coach Jeff Hornacek, it appears Carmelo is going to be the one leaving town this time around.
