{"id":209870,"date":"2025-09-08T09:36:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T09:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/209870\/"},"modified":"2025-09-08T09:36:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T09:36:10","slug":"hall-of-fame-melo-by-jonathan-macri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/209870\/","title":{"rendered":"Hall of Fame Melo &#8211; by Jonathan Macri"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Good morning! We start today with a hearty congratulations to Carmelo Anthony on his Hall of Fame <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nba.com\/news\/carmelo-anthony-hall-of-fame-emotion-inspiration-moment\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">induction<\/a> Saturday night.<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!UV11!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F98a3af2f-c19f-4381-87a8-8f823af6f96c_1200x768.png\" data-component-name=\"Image2ToDOM\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" class=\"image-link image2 is-viewable-img\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/98a3af2f-c19f-4381-87a8-8f823af6f96c_1200.jpeg\" width=\"1200\" height=\"768\" data-attrs=\"{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/98a3af2f-c19f-4381-87a8-8f823af6f96c_1200x768.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:768,&quot;width&quot;:1200,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:1456741,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image\/png&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/knicksfilmschool.substack.com\/i\/168063489?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F98a3af2f-c19f-4381-87a8-8f823af6f96c_1200x768.png&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}\" alt=\"\"   fetchpriority=\"high\" class=\"sizing-normal\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As you might expect, Melo shouted out his time in New York during the speech, saying his \u201csoul will always echo 33rd and 7th,\u201d and that he is, of course, Once a Knick, Always a Knick.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll have much more on Melo next week when (spoiler alert) we get to the final few spots on this list. For today though, we turn to two players whose careers in New York didn\u2019t quite live up to what Anthony was able to achieve, but whose time here is worthy of recognition regardless\u2026<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!J0qv!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe77e357f-a0ea-4526-b82b-41ce51f6eae6_1218x486.png\" data-component-name=\"Image2ToDOM\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" class=\"image-link image2 is-viewable-img\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/e77e357f-a0ea-4526-b82b-41ce51f6eae6_1218.jpeg\" width=\"1218\" height=\"486\" data-attrs=\"{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/e77e357f-a0ea-4526-b82b-41ce51f6eae6_1218x486.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:486,&quot;width&quot;:1218,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:1187640,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image\/png&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/knicksfilmschool.substack.com\/i\/168063489?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe77e357f-a0ea-4526-b82b-41ce51f6eae6_1218x486.png&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}\" alt=\"\"   class=\"sizing-normal\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Depending on which betting site you look at, the 2025-26 New York Knicks have somewhere between 7-to-1 and 9-to-1 odds of winning the NBA championship.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s the second year in a row they\u2019ll have odds below 10-to-1, which is the first time that\u2019s happened in a quarter century. Judging by how close they made it last year, the short odds are warranted.<\/p>\n<p>Even with this recent uptick in success and the expectations that come with it, tried and true fans won\u2019t easily forget the lean years that led up to this point. Carmelo Anthony\u2019s Hall-of-Fame induction this weekend certainly stirred up a mix of emotions for those who recall that era, but regardless of how you felt about the early 2010\u2019s, it\u2019s hard to deny that they were Shangri-La compared to what came immediately before and immediately after. Those memories scarred for life, to the point that even a Knicks championship isn\u2019t likely to eliminate them.<\/p>\n<p>But remembering what was is different than wondering what might have been. The former sticks around even after a team gets good, but the latter tends to dissipate, washed away by the notion of \u201cwell, it all got us to here, so what\u2019s the point in pondering?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, if Kristaps Porzingis never crumples over in a heap on February 6, 2018, there\u2019s certainly a possibility Jalen Brunson never becomes a Knick, just like if Amar&#8217;e Stoudemire\u2019s knees don\u2019t give out, New York might never have had the chance to draft KP in the first place. <\/p>\n<p>And while many fans would have given up their first born in exchange for what Leon Rose has turned the franchise into, it\u2019s OK to acknowledge that the multiverse contains other realities where the Knicks are contenders and Jalen Brunson is nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n<p>Are those realities plentiful? I wouldn\u2019t bet on it. But as I was sitting back this weekend and reflecting on the No. 6 &amp; 7 ranked players on my list, it was hard not to wonder about how things might have gone differently if injury luck went their way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Good morning! We start today with a hearty congratulations to Carmelo Anthony on his Hall of Fame induction&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":209871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[1260,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-209870","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-nba","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115168004259987967","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}