For whatever reason, Phil Jackson has been trying really hard to get rid of Carmelo Anthony. It’s gotten so bad that the Executive Director of the National Basketball Players Association is chiming in for the second time in as many months.
Michele Roberts is the Executive Director of the NBPA and was blunt in her quotes about Phil Jackson and Carmelo Anthony.
“I think Phil was deliberately trying to shame ‘Melo out of the city,” she told The Vertical.
This comes a month after Roberts released a statement in mid-April about how Jackson made “inappropriate comments” about Melo and that Jackson was using “his bully pulpit” against Melo.
Roberts really isn’t holding back and went on to say she’s nearly given up on waiting for the league to sanction Jackson. She added sanctioning Jackson is something she “would have bet my paycheck on” a couple days after the first comments surfaced, only to lose out on her figurative bet.
While Jackson has yet to receive a significant penalty of any kind, Roberts is now looking back at past similar instances where Commissioner Adam Silver punished people. Back in September of 2015, Markieff Morris was fined $10,000 for tweeting “My future is not in Phoenix” when his twin Marcus was traded to Detroit.
Silver’s office claimed Morris’ statement was “detrimental to the NBA.” So as Roberts points out, how is that different than Phil Jackson, the President of the New York Knicks, saying Melo “would be better off somewhere else”? It’s doesn’t seem much different.
“I have players who are unhappy that this hasn’t been responded to by the league,” Roberts told The Vertical.
The fact that other players outside of Melo aren’t happy with the league’s response says something. Is Jackson being held to his own double standard, and do executives have more leeway to say things than players do?
“The comments do damage to the game because they devalue the player and makes the fans who buy tickets question the value of the investment,” Roberts said.
After all, Jackson is largely responsible for the investment the Knicks made in Carmelo. Back in 2014 when the Knicks and Anthony agreed to a five-year contract extension, Jackson helped shape that deal, along with including the no-trade clause Jackson now wants Melo to waive.
So really, Jackson has nobody to blame but himself for the situation the Knicks and Anthony find themselves in.
“Our players understand that they can privately complain about how a team is managed but they cannot do it publicly without being subject to sanction,” Roberts said. “But it has to work both ways. If Phil tells ‘Melo in private that being in New York is not a good fit for him, that’s his right. But these comments were made in public, and it’s very disturbing because Phil gave him the no-trade clause and he has to respect it. He’s got to allow a player to make a decision for any reason – to win a ring, for money, home life, whatever.”
The key point in the above quote is what Roberts said at the very beginning:
“Our players understand that they can privately complain about how a team is managed but they cannot do it publicly without being subject to sanction.”
If the players know they can be sanctioned, why aren’t executives held to the same standard? One could argue Jackson’s comments were more detrimental than Morris’ were in 2015.
Morris simply said his future wasn’t in Phoenix. While this could hurt his trade value because other teams have leeway, he is harming his own value. At the same time, Jackson is publicly harming someone else’s value (Anthony) and making his own job harder as a result.
“I feel for ‘Melo, this is a tough time for him and I can only imagine how he’s feeling,” Roberts added. “I know he has been talking to some other people so I’ll let him sort it all out.”
I’d imagine it’s a tough time for Melo. He may want out of New York, but his own team’s president is making it harder for that to be possible by, as Roberts put it, “shaming” him.
