Carmelo Anthony has tried to play through his knee injury for the last week or two, but admitted Thursday that the pain is getting to him, and that people close to him are encouraging him to shut it down for at least a few weeks.

It had previously been reported that Melo might require surgery, but Anthony has made it clear that he will not do this unless he feels it is absolutely necessary.

Melo has always been a bit reckless when it comes to injuries— he always tries to avoid medical treatment, and allowed excess fluid in his knee to tank his performance for a couple weeks a couple seasons ago because he was “scared of needles.” Knicks doctors have told Melo that if he plays through this knee injury, it “won’t get worse, but it won’t get better.” After another setback in the game against Dallas on Tuesday, it looks like they might have been wrong about it not getting worse.

Melo definitely needs rest. And he probably needs surgery. The Knicks are NOT going anywhere this season, so he should probably get the surgery now, rather than get it in May or June (or not get it at all, or try to skip it and then need it next November) and throw away NEXT season as well in the process. Hopefully the Knicks (and Anthony) go about this the intelligent way.

On the flip side, it’s hard to get new stars to come team up with injured stars; we saw that with Derrick Rose this offseason. The Knicks might feel that they need to be respectable and need Melo to be healthy to have a shot at landing guys such as Marc Gasol this summer.

As things stand, Melo is day-to-day, questionable for every game, deciding whether or not to play based on how he feels on gameday. ESPN has some more details on the story.

-Tommy Rothman