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The rafters have gotten lonely for the Knicks at Madison Square Garden.
Eight players and one coach have their jerseys retired, but no one has joined them since Patrick Ewing in 2003.
It’s not a coincidence that correlates with a bleak time in Knicks basketball — they have won just playoff series in two decades.
Perhaps that’s why there has been talk of Carmelo Anthony entering what has become a pretty exclusive club, joining Walt Frazier, Dick Barnett, Dick McGuire, Earl Monroe, Willis Reed, Dave DeBusschere, Bill Bradley, Patrick Ewing and former coach Red Holzman.
From that group, only Ewing and McGuire didn’t win championships.
It should stay that way.
Anthony, as popular as he may be among Knicks fans, does not belong. One playoff series victory isn’t nearly enough. Team success has to matter.
Shortly after Anthony’s retirement in May, SNY’s Ian Begley reported there are some within the franchise who believe Anthony did enough in his seven seasons with the Knicks to warrant such an honor.
If they were to go there, then the Knicks should retire the jerseys of Bernard King, Allan Houston, Richie Guerin and Carl Braun, too. An argument can be made for others.
Now, Anthony did play a significant role in the history of the Knicks.
He wanted them at a time no other major stars did. He made them matter in an otherwise awful era of basketball at MSG.
He did lead the Knicks to the playoffs in three straight seasons from 2011-13 and represented them in six All-Star games.
He scored big — averaging 28.7 points in 2012-13, which led the NBA in scoring — and was the face of the franchise, annually carrying poor rosters.
Anthony is seventh all-time in Knicks history with 10,186 points. Only Bob McAdoo and King averaged more points as a Knick than Anthony’s 24.7 per game.
In his seven seasons with the team, only five NBA players scored more than he did: James Harden, LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant.
And Anthony owns the record for the most points scored in a game by a Knicks player with 62, set against the Bobcats on Jan. 24, 2014, and ranks ninth all-time in NBA history with 28,289 points.
He had a remarkable career. There is no debating that. He will be rightfully inducted into the Hall of Fame one day soon. He is an all-time great.
His time with the Knicks, however, doesn’t equate to jersey retirement status. Not when you consider some of the players to whom the Knicks have not given that honor. Not when you take a look at his career on Broadway. The Knicks have set a high bar they shouldn’t lower.
True, it is odd that a Hall of Famer wouldn’t have his jersey retired. Then again, Anthony always has been a very much star-crossed player. His detractors will point to his defensive shortcomings and lack of team success: The Knicks finished above .500 just three times during his time on Broadway.
His supporters, though, will focus on his offensive prowess and the lack of help he had throughout his career.
Unless they plan to retire jersey numbers of some of the aforementioned players, however, Anthony and his fans will have to settle for him being remembered as a very good Knick — a player who gave them something entertaining to watch during lean times — without his No. 7 being immortalized.
The Knicks set this precedent. It would be wrong to change it now.
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The Knicks are going back to their roots. For the first time since 2016, they will be traveling for training camp.
Tom Thibodeau’s team will be at The Citadel in Charleston, S.C., from Oct. 3-6, a departure from recent years when the team held its entire training camp at the practice facility in Westchester.
In 2016, the Knicks began camp at West Point on Army’s campus.
They used to frequently hold camp in Charleston, but that hasn’t been the case for several years. It became a tradition under then-coach Pat Riley in the 1990s, and Thibodeau is bringing it back.
The Knicks open the preseason against the Celtics at the Garden on Oct. 9.