Even if Anthony's shut down, rebuilding a misrepresentation of Knicks

There is a line between being a rebuilding team willing to accept hardship in the short term for long-term payoff and just being a bad team without intent. 

That line is not particularly thin, so while the New York Knicks may ultimately spin a dismal 2014-15 season as a rebuilding one, that would be a gross misrepresentation. The Knicks wanted to be good, with new president Phil Jackson setting the bar at a playoff appearance for a team that had gone 37-45 the year before and wasn't noticeably better on paper.

They currently sit at 5-30, 10 games out of a playoff spot in the weak Eastern Conference, and they're reaching a tough crossroads with superstar Carmelo Anthony. 

Anthony has been playing through left knee pain all season and it's believed he may ultimately require surgery. Head coach Derek Fisher admitted Friday that the team is getting close to the point at which they'd discuss shutting Anthony down for the season. The move would make all the sense in the world, since Anthony is playing through injury to help a team that can't win with or without him.

The reasonable course for the Knicks would be to sit Anthony down, affording him 10 months to explore options with the knee and begin rehabilitation before the 2015-16 season. He remains an excellent offensive player and the team scores 11.1 points per-100 possessions more when he's on the floor, but that's only been enough to nudge them from awful to bad. There is a 35-game sample of evidence to suggest the Knicks aren't any good with Anthony, so continuing to play him 36.1 minutes a night just to suffer narrower losses is short-sighted.

If and when the Knicks shut Anthony down, the focus will turn to the loss column rather than the win column, and the Knicks will surely sell this as a rebuilding season. After all, the Knicks actually own their first-round pick this year, and the projected top four players in the draft include three centers with immense potential and a high-risk, high-upside point guard in Emmanuel Mudiay. The prospect of landing Jahlil Okafor, Karl-Anthony Towns, Willie Cauley-Stein or Mudiay may be enough to keep a sizable fanbase engaged through an ugly end to the season.

The issue with the Knicks changing their focus to the future mid-stream is that the rest of the organization hasn't been operating as if it's rebuilding. Losing and landing a high pick is not rebuilding, it's just being bad.

The 4-27 Philadelphia 76ers are churning the roster for hidden rotation players and giving heavy usage to youngsters. The 5-26 Minnesota Timberwolves are devoted to developing a bevy of young players. The 13-23 Orlando Magic and 11-22 Utah Jazz have been doing the same, for two years for the former and perhaps a little too long for the latter.

Generally, rebuilding is a multi-year commitment to finding and developing young pieces. The Knicks are committed to building a system that may or may not take hold, but the fit of the pieces and efficacy of said system are both tenuous. They can give minutes to Shane Larkin, Tim Hardaway and Cleanthony Early, but none of those players are more than supporting pieces in the long run.

Should Anthony hit the sidelines, Fisher, Jackson and the Knicks will need to find ways to actually build for future seasons beyond just losing. This same Knicks team with a top pick and even one offseason acquisition - they're hardly a marquee destination but could maneuver into appreciable cap space - isn't a threat as currently constructed. They need to be able to take something from this season beyond having wasted a year of Anthony's prime and landing a high pick.