Carmelo and Phil are speaking but hurt feelings remain
LOS ANGELES - The door to the gym at USC opened and Phil Jackson was gone, ushered out a side door to a waiting black Mercedes, making his latest explanation an exclusive for an audience of one - Carmelo Anthony.
The two spoke at the Knicks' practice session, Jackson explaining the context of his latest oddly-timed comments and Anthony still wondering why Jackson feels the need to publicly air his opinions about the Knicks’ star.
“That was my question: why?” Anthony said. “Regardless of what was the context of it, interview or conversation, just why? Regardless of what you said, why every time my name comes up? Regardless of what we’re doing. He explained that. For me it’s been behind me since two days ago. At this point it ain’t no need for me to keep harping on the same situation.
“Honestly it’s not surprising. To me it’s not surprising. I think you get to a point in life where it’s like, 'OK, it’s water off your back.’ You try not to read into things too much. I think this was one of those situations. He’s got to be careful with the choice of words that he uses. He understands that, he knows that.”
The latest episode came when Jackson was on CBS Sports Network, and like the LeBron James comments that got him in trouble last month (and which Anthony wondered aloud why Jackson was even talking about James) Jackson offered up a criticism of Anthony, describing his tendency to hold the ball too long and spoil his offensive system.
While Anthony was hesitant to reveal the exact details of the conversation, his dissatisfaction with being the target of the critiques from the team president was evident - as was his expectation that it wasn’t going to stop.
Anthony has seen it before. While it was in a different role, during Jackson’s days as a coach winning championships rather than a struggling team executive, Jackson has done this before, criticizing Kobe Bryant or his other stars through the media or more pointedly in one of his books.
“Me and Kobe have had countless conversations about that. Countless,” Anthony said. “That’s why I said after a while it’s like water off your back. I learned from the guys who came before more.”
And Kobe’s advice to him?
“Keep on going,” Anthony said. “Keep your head up and moving. Don’t read into it too much. For me that’s something I’ve learned over the years, especially with Phil. He’s going to talk. Nobody can stop that. So try not to read into it too much.”
Anthony didn’t dodge the media as Jackson has often done since his tenure began, seeking out only favorable coverage. But Anthony also wasn’t backing down - insisting that he wasn’t holding a grudge, but that the problem was also one-sided, with nothing to apologize or explain from his side. He said his piece in Instagram posts and again voiced it Saturday.
“It’s not really any amends to make,” Anthony said. “From my standpoint, there’s no problems, there’s no issues. He said what he had to say. I won’t go into details. I don’t want to tell you all what he said. It was a good conversation. It was good for me to get in front of him and kind of hear his perspective on what happened and how it all went down.
“It was behind me. I wasn’t letting me linger. It wasn’t anything that was affecting me. It was just something that if I got an opportunity to speak to him I was going to tell him how I felt about what happened and what was said, if anything was misinterpreted. He spoke his piece.”
Steve Popper writes for the Bergen Record, part of the Paste BN Network. Email him at popper@northjersey.com