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The New York Knicks will tip off this season with a vast void in the locker room. Carmelo Anthony, the once leader of this team throughout six-and-a-half years, will be suited up across from them tonight instead of right next to them as he had in the past.
He may have been gone for almost a month, but his teammates haven't forgotten the simplest of moments next to the 33-year-old.
“He kept us together,” forward Lance Thomas said earlier this month, according to ESPN's Ian Begley. “It's something that you wouldn't know if you weren't in there with us. It didn't ever get [discussed by media and fans]… But no matter what was going on, he was smiling, he was keeping all of that stuff outside of the locker room.”
Anthony has often been praised as a consummate professional, taking shot after shot from his surroundings and plowing through adversity in perhaps the toughest media market in the country. The perennial 20-plus-point scorer came to work every day and while many were quick to point out his aggressive style of offense, he was there for his teammates at a moment's notice.
“You could never tell that something was going on. He was always calm, collected — every day. It was no big deal for him, all the off-court stuff,” his protege Kristaps Porzingis said. “And that's one thing I can learn from him — ‘don't give a s***' [about the drama]. He was just doing his thing and focusing on things he needs to focus on and not letting anything else come in his way.”
Anthony is looking to close that chapter of his life and zone in to his goal of going for the hardware — all starting tonight when he suits up against his former team in his new home at Chesapeake Energy Arena.
