Carmelo Anthony has made his choice. The New York Knicks avoided a disaster season. Carmelo Anthony will be the cornerstone of the Knicks and Madison Square Garden's top draw. They will still be an interesting franchise, but that's about it.

In the five year window for both Carmelo Anthony and team president Phil Jackson, will they ever win a championship? Or has Carmelo accepted that he will end up on the 'greatest players without a title' list and took the most money as a consolation prize?

Grantland had a full feature on Carmelo Anthony. Melo has been a much maligned player with people calling him selfish and a 'ball stopper.' From Grantland's Bill Simmons:

"Everyone bitched about his 'ball-stopping' - something of which he's definitely been guilty, from time to time, over the past few years - but when your coach is in a basketball coma and your entire offense has degenerated into 'throw the ball to Melo and he'll have to create a shot,' what do you expect? Every opponent went into every Knicks game saying, 'As long as we don't let Carmelo kill us, we're winning tonight." And he still threw up 28 a night and played the most efficient basketball of his career. That's a fact. It just wasn't that much fun to watch."

Carmelo got such a bad impression that he was not even a part of any All-NBA team despite finishing second only to Kevin Durant in scoring.

The big promise to Carmelo is to wait another season, when the Knicks have cap space to run after big free agents. But some of those free agents will be lost. Kevin Love will be traded and will likely sign an extension with the team that takes him. If that team is the Cleveland Cavaliers, Melo can forget about winning the East.

LaMarcus Aldridge, the other big free agent, has already mentioned that he will stay in Portland. There is no reason so far to think otherwise.  Rajon Rondo will likely be traded as well (because Danny Ainge doesn't like losing players for nothing) but not to the Knicks. Marc Gasol is the likely target especially with their acquisition of Jose Calderon, but will that be enough to win a Finals?

Simmons has concluded that the door may have closed on Carmelo, and no one is to blame but him. He had a choice this year with the Chicago Bulls, and he would probably regret not taking it because of the money:

"Thirty years from now, long after he has retired and hopefully spent his more than $300 million nest egg wisely, Carmelo will be sitting on the porch of one of his nine houses, nursing a drink, staring out at an ocean and thinking about the unknown. Should he have picked Chicago? How much money is enough money? What's the price of peace? What would it have been worth to know - to really, truly know? Was he good enough? Could he have gotten there? Did he have it in him?"