New York Knicks

Phil Jackson's cryptic tweet is actually his biggest shot at Carmelo yet

Published Feb. 7, 2017 5:52 p.m. ET

Nate Scott

On Tuesday afternoon New York Knicks president Phil Jackson sent out a tweet that, upon first glance, was pretty hard to decode. Actually, very hard to decode.

https://twitter.com/PhilJackson11/status/829062793802420224

When I first saw it, I thought it was NBA Mad Libs, just words tossed up there to form some sort of ... something. A poem, maybe?

But then FS1's Nick Wright came to the rescue to translate it for me.

https://twitter.com/getnickwright/status/829076619415261185

https://twitter.com/getnickwright/status/829076963704737792

https://twitter.com/getnickwright/status/829077411249532928

Follow all that? Basically, Bleacher Report's Kevin Ding wrote an article that was critical of Carmelo Anthony, saying that he had other priorities besides winning. Phil Jackson then basically agreed with the article, publicly saying it was close to the mark, and then saying he had learned in his previous experiences that you can't get players to change.

This is a Knicks executive publicly calling out his team's star and saying he can't hope to change him, even though he's the one who gave him a max contract and a no-trade clause. Jackson is doing so on Twitter.

This tweet may be hard to understand, but it's Jackson's biggest shot at Anthony yet. And it should mean that one of them is going to have to go, and sooner rather than later.