Carmelo Anthony Reveals Secrets Behind Setting Knicks Record

One of the most euphoric moments in New York Knicks history was a tour of revenge against the city itself.

The perpetrator himself admitted as much during an appearance on Paul George’s web series, which offered a behind-the-scenes look at Carmelo Anthony’s 62-point game from January 2014.

Anthony described the franchise single-game record output against the Charlotte Bobcats as “inspiring” … albeit for unexpected, vengeful reasons.

“I had lost some games, we weren’t playing well,” Anthony recalled. “New York was on, they was all over me, the media, everybody … I was in such a zone, it was a zone that nothing or nobody or anybody could say (anything). It’s like a bubble. You’re angry. The fans are on you, the media is ridiculing you, you don’t know what your teammates are thinking, we’re losing.”

“But, at the end of the day, I’m going to show you that, how great I am, in the sense of I ain’t worrying about that other (stuff). So if I ain’t worrying about, we ain’t worried about that (stuff) and it was just flowing, flowing, flowing, flowing.”

Anthony’s Knicks career was staged amidst one of the bleaker periods on the metropolitan timeline: though he wowed fans on a nightly basis over six-plus seasons (2011-17), the Knicks won but a single playoff series in that span and missed the postseason entirely in the in the last full four years, a streak that began with the 2013-14 campaign.

A late January visit from Charlotte was an undeniable silver lining and gave Anthony a permanent place in the team’s history book. With 62 tallies en route to a 125-96 win, Anthony broke the single-game franchise record Bernard King established on Christmas Day in 1984.

Anthony explained to George and his co-panelists (which included new Knick Mikal Bridges) had entered the game motivated thanks to an unnamed guru of sorts that regularly visited the New York locker room. Inspired by Muhammad Ali videos the guru shared, Anthony was locked in for a performance for the metropolitan ages.

“That was just a moment where it’s hard to tell what happened,” Anthony said. “I just knew that I felt like I was in another space at that moment. Again, I was angry, so I was just trying to isolate myself in a space where only I can operate in this space mentally. F*** everybody. It was like a f*** you 62.”

“People think that just a happy (moment) but, no, I’m like scoring, looking at the fans, like f*** y’all. (Fans) have bags on their head, all types of s*** going on. F*** all of y’all. I wasn’t saying it verbally but it was like every jab that I could give you, it was going to be a f*** you jab.”

For a brief moment, Anthony’s outburst had lingering aftershocks, as the triumph over the Bobcats kickstarted a four-game winning streak. However, the Knicks lost 13 of their next 15 after that, which was enough to commence a streak of seven consecutive playoff misses. Anthony wound up leaving after the 2016-17 season, departing as one of only seven New Yorkers to reach 10,000 points in a blue-and-orange uniform.

Anthony’s 62-point record continues to stand today, though current Knick Jalen Brunson recently came close, coming just one point short of tying him in a late March loss to San Antonio.

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