One of the highlights of the 2011-2012 season was the emergence of a player not known to many, a player who was waived by his previous team and someone who came from a school which was not best known for basketball. We're talking, of course, about the emergence of Jeremy Lin.
Linsanity was at its all-time high during a seven-game winning streak back in the February of 2012. It was brief, but the Knicks fans know how special it was. They have been searching for something as remarkable as those couple of weeks since.
On a podcast with The Vertical, Lin's former coach with the Knicks, Mike D'Antoni, confirmed two established stars from his lineup then resented Lin for the praise he received and were unwilling to adapt to his style: Carmelo Anthony and Amar'e Stoudemire.
From D'Antoni:
“It was there, it’s real. The problem that we had was that for Jeremy to be really good, which he was, he had to play a certain way. It was hard for him to adapt.
“Amar’e, Melo, whatever, kinda had their way they had to play a certain way to be really, really good. So there was that inherent conflict of: What’s better for the team? What isn’t? Can they co-exist? Can they not? And again, they could co-exist if Melo went to the 4, which he really didn’t want to, and if Amar’e came to the backup [center], like the Tyson [Chandler], which he didn’t want to.”
The sudden improvement of Lin produced nonstop wins for the Knicks. However, it created a split within the team. Guys were torn between two identities and did not know which direction to go in and which brand of basketball to play.
“So it’s now, ‘What are we gonna do?’ and so, we see how to go and I didn’t know how to get there. With losing again and you try to prod them and ‘you gotta play harder’ and all the coaches-speak … and communications like deteriorated.
“And then you would see the faces of guys that went through Linsanity and they’re looking at you … they see what we can do, we’re not doing it, they get frustrated.”
Just last season, Stoudemire addressed his time with the Knicks. He didn't drop Anthony's name, but he did speak on Lin.
“If [Lin] stayed, it would’ve been cool,” Stoudemire said in February. “But everyone wasn’t a fan of him being a new star. So he didn’t stay long. Jeremy was a great, great guy, great with teammates, worked hard. He put the work in. We were proud of him having his moment. A lot of times you got to enjoy somebody else’s success. That wasn’t the case for us during that stretch. You got to enjoy that and let that player enjoy himself and cherish those moments. He was becoming a star and I didn’t think everyone was pleased with that.”
During the end of the podcast, D'Antoni's final comment about his tenure with the Knicks was somewhat directed to the “frustrated” role players he had in his lineup then:
“There’s some guys in the league that I really want to respect me. I respect the way they play, I respect the way they look at the game, and their respect is more important instead of having a job. [If] everybody else is killing me, I’d rather be killed and those guys respect me.
“Relationships deteriorated where I couldn’t get the most out of people. Take me away and they’ll up their game.”
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