By Chris Celletti

– Contributor

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Nov 2, 2011 – Tonight would have been the most anticipated opening night for the New York Knicks in a very, very long time. After years of season openers in which Knicks’ fans were forced to watch the likes of Stephon Marbury, Keith Van Horn, Eddy Curry, and worst of all Isiah Thomas, it was finally time for the Knicks to enter an NBA season as a legitimately good team with high expectations and tons of attention. The Knicks’ fanbase has starved for this moment and it’s fitting that they’ll have to wait longer, for the NBA Lockout has stolen opening night from fans of the 30 NBA franchises.

The Knicks could have played anyone on 2011-12 opening night, and the newly-renovated Madison Square Garden would have been the center of the New York sports world. But MSG would have had the entire country’s eyes on it tonight. The second season of The Big Three and Not Much Else Experiment was supposed to be in town – the Miami Heat of course – and we would have been gifted perhaps the biggest regular season NBA spectacle at Madison Square Garden since Michael Jordan returned and dropped 55 points on March 28, 1995. 

Think I’m nuts or being overly dramatic? I challenge you to come up with another regular season Knicks game with as much juice.

You would have had Amare Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony, beginning their first full year as New York Knick teammates, burdened with the task of launching the Knicks back to true contention. There of course would have been Miami’s Big Three, especially LeBron James. Fresh off another playoff flameout, James – who has always played fantastic at MSG – would have had perhaps  the most pressure on him in an opening night game than any other NBA player has ever faced. Sure, it would have been Game 1 of 82. But season openers are always a spectacle, and how much bigger could it have gotten in the NBA than this?

Instead, we’re left with, well, what? There will likely be an opening night to this season at some point, as long as the owners and players get their heads out of their you-know-what’s. Who knows when it will be? With free agency yet to take place because of the work stoppage, it’s impossible to know what each team will look like. There’s no question, however, that the Knicks and Heat would have put on a show tonight at the Garden. 

Too bad the NBA and its players closed the curtain.

Read More: Carmelo Anthony (F – NYK), LeBron James (F – MIA), Stephon Marbury (G – BOS), Eddy Curry (C – MIN), Amare Stoudemire (F – NYK), Keith Van Horn (F – NJN), New York Knicks, Miami Heat

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Of course former New York Knick GM Donnie Walsh thinks the team he just left could be a “championship-contender.” Technically, he brought the players in; though there is still some sort of consternation as to whether or not he would have given up as much as James Dolan gave up in the trade for Carmelo Anthony(notes).

And, technically, he’s still a Knick employee; paid as a team consultant.

And, technically? He didn’t actually say “championship-contender.”

From an interview with Marc Berman at the New York Post (via Pro Basketball Talk):

“We have a core of players we can build around to build a [championship-contending] team,” Walsh said. “We’re not finished. There’s more pieces. But I think we got some really good players that can lead a team and form a core of that team. What we have are the most important things.”

What did he say within the brackets, there? The ones that hit the Post as “[championship-contending]“? I’m having a little fun here, Berman’s not going to fudge a quote, but it does leave Donnie a nice out for whenever the Knicks stop paying him.

And, technically again, he’s not wrong. All cores can be looked at as championship-contending if you toss in enough caveats. And Donnie tossed in quite a few. The difference is just how close to “championship-contending” your core is by itself, or if it’s merely a “[championship-contender].”

The Knicks, I’m sure you’d agree, have the former in the form of Amar’e Stoudemire(notes) and Carmelo Anthony. Stoudemire is the NBA’s premier scorer at the big forward position, sorry Dirk, and Carmelo is a solid second behind Kevin Durant(notes). The problem is that someone like Dirk Nowitzki(notes) does untold things that don’t show up in a typical box score (like creating brilliant spacing and working from spots that leave obvious passing angles, even if he doesn’t get the assist), and things that do show up in the box score (like those once-a-week turnovers).

And Durant? Like Carmelo, he’ll hardly be confused with T.R. Dunn anytime soon, but unlike Carmelo he’s also surrounded by a brilliant cast of lockdown defenders and role-players.

Because the Knicks are grandfathered into massive deals with Stoudemire and Anthony, they’ll hit next summer’s big free-agent offseason with over $44 million in salary tied up in just four players, with the [championship-contending] core combining for just over $40 million. We have no idea what the next collective bargaining agreement is going to look like, and no clue as to where the cap is going to be set. But it nearly goes without saying that the Knicks will have to be awfully creative to finagle a max-making third star into signing a deal with New York.

And doing so, at least under the old rules, would leave New York top-heavy as they struggled to fill out the rest of their roster; not unlike last year’s Miami Heat. The Miami Heat contended for a championship. Could a Knick team with an approximation of Miami’s trio do the same? Hard to tell. Hard to tell if they can even get a chance to, considering the next CBA.

What’s worst? Even if the NBA resolves its lockout in the next few weeks, Knick fans will have to wait at least another year before finding out if they can lose the brackets surrounding “[championship-contending].”

Related: Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, Amar’e Stoudemire, Dirk Nowitzki, Miami Heat

Updated Sep 7, 2011 4:01 AM ET

New York Knicks star Carmelo Anthony had two cell phones stolen by an unidentified attendee after an all-star charity game in Baltimore last week, the New York Post reported Wednesday, citing a source.

“Fans bum-rushed the court to get close to the guys after the game,” the source said.

“Carmelo’s phones were stolen during all of the chaos.”

Fans on Twitter caught wind of the missing phones and tweeted to help Anthony find them.

A rep said they still had not been returned to Anthony, who played alongside the Miami Heat’s LeBron James at the event at Morgan State University.

Read more here

New York Knicks Superstar, Amar’e Stoudemire has recently sold his exclusive penthouse property in W South Beach for a whopping $5.2 million to a company called MF Penthouse 3 LLC.

Amar’e Stoudemire’s $5.2 million penthouse is among the finest pads available in South Beach, ever. Due to the recent NBA lockout, not to mention the flunked out deal between the Miami Heat and Amar’e Stoudemire, we can only assume that the recent real estate sale was made for investment reasons (and of course, because of the ongoing economic crises).

The real estate deal was closed just recently, and Amar’e Stoudemire got assistance from people like Mathew Kreiger, a Miami Beach attorney and Dave Marotta, a real estate broker who was also the listing agent on the said property.

Quentin Battle
W South Beach