The New York Knicks have been in a major NBA Championship drought.
The New York Knicks haven’t won the NBA Championship since 1973.
They haven’t made the NBA Finals since 1999. It looked like the Knicks were going to get there last season, but they ran into the Indiana Pacers who eliminated them from the Eastern Conference Finals.
Former Knicks player Carmelo Anthony said the Knicks would have won a championship with him, if they did this one thing two years before trading for him.
Carmelo Anthony speculates what would have happened if the New York Knicks drafted Stephen Curry
One of the biggest what ifs in basketball is what if Stephen Curry was drafted by the Knicks?
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It almost happened back in 2009. Curry was taken at No. 7 by the Golden State Warriors, one pick before the Knicks. New York ended up drafting Jordan Hill 8th overall.
The Knicks ended up trading for Anthony in a blockbuster three-team trade with the Denver Nuggets and Minnesota Timberwolves a few years later on February 22, 2011.
Anthony revealed on the 7PM in Brooklyn podcast that if the Knicks had drafted Curry two years before he arrived, the Knicks would have won the title.
“At 09, if he’s [Stephen Curry] drafted by the Knicks, then they have their centerpiece.
“They have their corner piece of the organization. But mind you, nobody knew Steph was going to be this Steph. Everybody was counting him out.
“Ankle, he was injury prone, he couldn’t play. Everybody was counting him out those first couple years.
“We winning the championship with Donnie Walsh.”
Would the New York Knicks have won an NBA title with Stephen Curry?
The Knicks would have had a pretty enticing lineup had they drafted Curry and still traded for Melo.
New York would have had Curry, Anthony, J.R. Smith and Amar’e Stoudemire. On paper, it’s easy to say the Knicks would have challenged for the title, but it probably would have played out differently.
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Who knows if Curry would have developed the same way playing alongside Melo, who demanded to have the ball in his hands.
Also, during that time the LeBron James-led Miami Heat and Cleveland Cavaliers were dominating the East. It’s tough to imagine the Knicks being able to take them down.
For as fun as it is to speculate Curry on the Knicks, it’s safe to assume he probably would not have found the same type of success with the Knicks as he did with the Warriors.
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