There are no more excuses. The stage is set for Carmelo Anthony to have his best season. Maybe not his best scoring year, but his MVP year.
Spurred on by the Olympic experience playing alongside LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Kobe Bryant, Anthony has come into his first full training camp as a Knick in better shape than ever — about 15 pounds lighter than last December.
He is sharp as a tack in scrimmages, silky-smooth with his shot, committed to defense and in instilling confidence in his teammates. And best of all, Anthony is in love with his veteran point guards, Raymond Felton and Jason Kidd, and coach Mike Woodson.
Sounds too good to be true? Stay tuned. That reputedly stubborn superstar who had a hand in Mike D’Antoni’s abrupt resignation and Jeremy Lin’s departure sounds transformed. Getting ousted eight of his nine seasons in the first round has sunk in. You could hear it in his voice on Day 1 of training camp.
Anthony had promised the sharpness from the Olympics would carry over, and it has.
“Me, I’m way ahead of as far as conditioning goes, normally where anybody would come into training camp,’’ Anthony said. “I’m far along. As a team, it made it a lot easier because everybody came into camp in shape.’’
Anthony has yet to play a full 82-game schedule as a Knick. He was acquired in February of the 2010-11 season; and last season was the lockout-shortened 66-game campaign in which Anthony battled a series of nagging injuries and didn’t get healthy until D’Antoni had already resigned. He was superb under Woodson until the Miami playoff series, when injuries ravaged his supporting cast.
On Media Day, Anthony said he wanted to score less, win more. He wants to be more selfless and get his teammates going. Sort of the way his Olympic teammate James went about business in leading the Heat to a championship.
“When guys take shots, they miss shots, let them know that they’re going to make the next shot,’’ Anthony said yesterday. “It’s the little things that count out there.’’
Anthony has never been good at the little things. He said being around the game’s superstars on Team USA put that in perspective.
“It’s just now trusting my teammates a lot more,’’ Anthony said. “For all of us, if we can trust one another on the basketball court it will make things a lot easier. And being with the guys on that team this summer, it really put that in perspective. It’s easy when you have 12 of the best guys on the world on one team, but that same mind set, you still try to have trust in one another. So to incorporate that now, to my own team, it makes things a lot easier for myself.’’
Anthony and Tyson Chandler were with Team USA from the opening of training camp July 5 in Las Vegas to the gold-medal win over Spain in London on Aug. 12.
“It is a bonus,’’ Woodson said. “When you spend the whole summer competing at a high level for something of that magnitude and winning a gold medal, it’s a bonus for any coach to have two players who played throughout the summer and didn’t get a whole lot of time off. They should be pumped up and ready to go. These two guys have been that way. It’s nice to see.
“It’s been a long summer for Melo and Tyson in terms of playing and it’s been nice because it’s flowed into vet camp. Those guys are in damn good shape.’’
Anthony has no reservations about Felton having the rock and responsibility, after having qualms about Lin.
“It’s his show,’’ Anthony said of Felton. “The ball is in his hands. He gets the ball, we space out, we do what we have to do. He runs the team so the ball is in Raymond’s hands. It makes things a lot more easier out there. It settles everything down for myself, for everybody to get in their spots, where they can be that much effective rather than me trying to bring the ball up the court, make a play for my teammates for myself, and try to do everything. I’d rather just play off of Raymond and do what I do best.’’
The best may be yet to come.
marc.berman@nypost.com