Drafted third overall by the Denver Nuggets in 2003, Carmelo Anthony was one of the brightest stars in his draft class. In his time with the Nuggets, he led the team to the Conference Finals once but never made it out of the first round. Eventually, Anthony requested a trade, which sent him to the New York Knicks in February 2011 along with Chauncey Billups.
Anthony stayed with the Knicks through the 2016-17 season but with little success. In his first two seasons, the Knicks lost in the first round of the playoffs before making it to the second round but then went on a losing streak and missed the postseason entirely for the remainder of the Carmelo Anthony era.
No team is perfect, and neither were any of the squads the Knicks assembled around Anthony during his time in New York. So, let’s look at some of the worst starters of the Carmelo Anthony era in New York.
Ranking the 6 Worst Knicks starters of the Carmelo Anthony era
6. Sasha Vujacic
Sasha Vujacic played 61 games for the Knicks in the 2015-16 season and started 25 of those games. Even though he was a starter for almost half of the games he played, Vujacic only averaged 14.9 minutes per game. In those minutes, he put up 4.9 points on 38.3% shooting from the field and 36.4% from three with 2.4 rebounds and 1.4 assists per game.
While these were regular stats for Vujacic over his NBA career, and he had been a two-time All-Star in the Turkish Basketball League, the output and scoring efficiency did not justify his being a starter. Accordingly, he had never started more than 17 games in his career, and the Knicks also realized that maybe he wasn’t meant to be a starter in the NBA.
In the following season, he only started four games, and his playing time dropped significantly as the Knicks made some moves to try and escape their three-year playoff drought.