Five years ago, Knicks management took a chance on Stoudemire, signing the big man to a five year deal at $99.7 million. When he was brought in, he embraced New York and the challenge of winning with the Knicks. His “The Knicks Are Back!” mantra reverberated with the fan base and brought back a lot of the confidence that had been sucked away during the Isiah Thomas era. After first coming to town, Amar'e said all the right things in the media, he worked hard to return from a number of injuries and didn’t complain when those physical ailments sent him to the bench. He was a good teammate. If that’s why Knicks fans remember and think of him so fondly, so be it, because otherwise his Knicks tenure was an unmitigated disaster. Does it surprise anybody else that no other team took a flyer on him when he left Phoenix? He had been dealing with bad knees, but the Knicks were the only team to sign him, and to a max deal at five years and close to a hundred million. That should have been a red flag right there. But the Knicks went ahead and brought him on board anyway.
When the first year here in New York, Amar'e looked decent. He played in 78 games that year, the most he played in New York. He put up some pretty decent numbers in that first year, nine straight 30-point games, 25.3 points, 8.2 rebounds a game. Those are numbers of a guy who looks to be on a rebound from what happened to him in Phoenix. Then in the playoffs, he looked decent in Game One against the Boston Celtics. After playing great in Game 1, he hurt his back in warmups of Game 2. It all went downhill from there for Amar'e. He was a shell of himself in the final three games as the Celtics swept the Knicks. The following season in the playoffs, Stoudemire cut his hand on a fire extinguisher case, costing his team yet again.
To make matters worse, Amar'e never played anywhere close to what he did that first year in the Orange and Blue. The injury bug always found a way to catch up to him again, with constant knee issues failing to keep him on the court for consistent stretches. The next three seasons saw Amar'e play 47, 29 and 65 games. And this just this season, before leaving town, he suited up just 36 games due to injuries to his back and knees. When the Knicks signed him to that contract, even in the worst-case scenario, they envisioned getting two or three full seasons out of him. He couldn’t even make it through the playoffs of his first year.
Stoudemire didn’t have a net positive effect on the Knicks’ win-loss record, either. He started his Knicks career in 2010 by going 16-9, but after that it never seemed to work. In Stoudemire’s five years with the Knicks, the team went 110-147 when he played. When he missed games, the team went 67-41.
It's funny. When Amar'e was brought into the fold here in New York, he said in his press conference "The Knicks Are Back!” Well they're back alright. They right back to where they started before handing him a huge contract filled with a whole lot of nothing. But fear not Knicks fans. There is hope. Just because the Amar'e Stoudemire contract didn't work out doesn't mean there isn't hope. With his contract now off the books, there is actual cap space to work with. Team President Phil Jackson now has even more cap space to work with to try and build a championship team.
Even though the Amar'e experiment didn't work out, there is still hope Knicks fans!
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