The Knicks should not trade for Carmelo Anthony again.

On January 2nd, the Knicks won an early afternoon home game. All five starters scored in double-figures, led by their 28-year-old probable All-Star power forward. Possessing a goodly sum of exciting young talent — all five starters under 30 — the Knicks have a winning record at this point in a season for the first time in 10 years, and reason to believe the future is bright.

On January 2nd, the Knicks won an early afternoon home game. All five starters scored in double-figures, led by their 28-year-old probable All-Star power forward. Possessing a goodly sum of exciting young talent — all five starters under 30 — the Knicks have a winning record at this point in a season for the first time in 10 years, and reason to believe the future is bright.

Unless you’re the impatient type, you just read the same paragraph twice. There’s a reason for that. One of those paragraphs speaks to where the franchise stands as of now, January 3, 2023. The other one speaks to where it stood January 3, 2011.

On that day New York bested Indiana behind 26 from Amar’e Stoudemire. The other starters — Raymond Felton, Danilo Gallinari, Wilson Chandler and Landry Fields — contributed a mixture of passing, perimeter shooting and intelligent defense. Replace “Indiana” with “Phoenix,” STAT with Julius Randle and the other starters with Jalen Brunson, Mitchell Robinson, Immanuel Quickley and Quentin Grimes and the parallels remain.

A month later, New York swung a deal for Carmelo Anthony. We know how that went: on an individual level, the bucket-getting bucket hatter lived up to the legend. Anyone who witnessed his 62-point night remembers the special feeling that night. Most pro’ly also remember it came in a year the team didn’t make the playoffs. You can argue there were a lot of points where the Donnie Walsh/Mike D’Antoni Knicks lost their way. Maybe the Melo trade? Picking up Chauncey Billups’ option, then amnestying him before he ever played another minute for them? Trading for Tyson Chandler? Giving STAT a max contract with no injury protections?

I’m not sure there’s any one answer. Mistakes, like orgies, tend to come in waves. To me, the crime against the basketball gods they committed is clear: thou shalt not place your hopes in one great player, then trade most of your depth for another player who, while undeniably great, not only doesn’t enhance the first one’s greatness but can’t help but work against it. The moment the Knick title teams took off was when they traded away a Hall of Famer center in Walt Bellamy for Dave DeBusschere. Not because they scammed the Pistons, but because by letting Willis Reed move to center, they allowed their best players to play roles that suited their individual strengths, enhancing the collective good.

Stoudemire’s greatest success as a Knick came as a small-ball 5, a role that went extinct once Chandler was acquired. Melo’s salad days in New York came as a small-ball 4, which only ever happened because of Stoudemire’s injuries. Those who lived through Chandler/Stoudemire/Anthony minutes remember them with a Cold War grimness. Lots of ideas make lots of sense until exposed to some reality. The next year, 2012, was the only time those “Big 3” played meaningful time together. In nearly 800 minutes shared, they had a net rating of -1.0 Replace STAT with rookie Iman Shumpert in the same number of minutes and the rating jumped eight points.

Last night Donovan Mitchell had one of the greatest scoring games in league history. Mitchell was nearly the Knicks’ modern Melo, had they been willing to make Grimes the new Timofey Mozgov and throw him into the deal (I promise I’ll stop with the parallels now). A few friends asked me today if Mitchell’s 71-point night made me regret the Knicks not pulling the trigger for him. Mama didn’t raise no fool, kid. Don’t you know how inflation works? 71 is just the new 62.

Trading for Mitchell would have meant minimizing Jalen Brunson’s role before he played a single minute as a Knick. Maybe it’s a NYC thing, or a corporate NYC thing, to think you can just throw one big name after another and it’ll automatically translate into more profit, more wins, more eyeballs. It never works. Adding Patrick Ewing to Bill Cartwright didn’t help either man’s game. Trading Ewing for Glen Rice when you already had Allan Houston and Latrell Sprewell never made sense. Pairing Stephon Marbury and Steve Francis created more blasphemous “the new Clyde & Pearl!” talk than it did any wins. We already discussed STAT and Melo. We’ve done that. When we were a child, we spake as a child, we understood as a child, we thought as a child: but when we became adults, we put away childish things. Ideally.

Leon Rose was hired to land what Knick fans are told is their white whale: a superstar. He’s been clear on how that happens: it ain’t via the draft — too many variables — and it ain’t via free agency — until/unless the Knicks are ever good on their own first, no self-respecting superstar has any reason to come here when there are warmer, winning-er franchises in states with lower income tax, or none at all. So then a trade it must be, eh?

No.

How many of the current title contenders came into being because of a huge trade for a star? How about none? Boston’s built on the back of a once-in-a-lifetime trade. Milwaukee did win a title after making a big trade for a star, but Jrue Holiday was the finishing piece after they’d already ascended to be good-but-not-quite-there. Ditto with Philadelphia and James Harden, and Jimmy Butler if you wanna go back earlier. Cleveland is trying to do an earlier-in-time version of those trades with Mitchell. Brooklyn technically traded for Kevin Durant, but that wasn’t their doing; Golden State brokered a deal because they didn’t want to lose KD for nothing. The only team I can think of who’ve tried to build a championship off of a superstar trade are the L.A. Clippers, and even that gets an asterisk because they knew the enormous package they were giving up for Paul George was the price of acquiring free agent superstar Kawhi Leonard.

The Knicks have something going. They should stay this course and see where it leads them. The superstar fetish is supposedly a response to the franchise not having won a title in so long. You know what else the Knicks haven’t done for a long time? Be good for a while. So try being good for a while, see how an electrified MSG that functions as an actual homecourt advantage strikes players who are literally too young to have any memories of what that’s like, and see what happens.

Tom Thibodeau is in his third season and has a winning record; besides Mike Woodson, Jeff Van Gundy and Pat Riley, I don’t think any Knick coach has done that in 50 years. The team has so many surplus draft picks they got docked one for tampering and nobody cares. Contract-wise, the ancient mariner’ll have to find his albatrosses elsewhere; not a bad deal on the books. I know — trust me, I know — the ways a .500 team’s ups and downs can weigh on you. Just this time, please, Knicks, this time have a little patience. Just a little bit longer.