It was only a matter of time. Big budget NBA teams featuring maximum salaried superstars in major markets with several competing news papers tend to have varying agendas to work through. When the team and player in question lose 20 of 24 games to start a season, people are going to start talking. Off the record, of course.
On Friday, Marc Berman of the New York Post reported that Knicks scoring forward Carmelo Anthony would be amenable to waiving his no-trade clause if it meant greasing the wheels for a potential trade to a better team.
The sources who spoke didn’t say that Carmelo has waived it, that he’s demanded a trade, or that any deal was imminent. The sources just said, in a potential situation, Carmelo might be OK with it.
OK.
Five months after swearing his allegiance to New York and signing a five-year, $124 million contract, sources told The Post the All-Star forward would be open to dropping his no-trade clause if team president Phil Jackson strikes a deal with a team Anthony would like to play for.
Part of Anthony’s deal included the rarely used no-trade provision.
For now, Anthony has no desire to be traded, but his willingness to consider giving up the no-trade clause shows how frustrated he has become with the Knicks’ historically bad start to the season.
[…]
“He thought things would be better than this, but he still wants to stick it out for now, ’’ a source said. “He trusts Phil, but I think he’s afraid of Phil.’’
Right.
All of this comes in anticipation of the Dec. 15 trade deadline, of sorts, one that allows teams to deal players signed during the previous summer’s offseason.
You forgot? That’s right, it’s only been five months since Carmelo Anthony signed a five-year and over $124 million deal with the New York Knicks, committing to the team’s rebuilding process and his adopted hometown over suitors with greater championship prospects, sunnier climates, or combinations of the two.
The Post’s competitors were quick to go after the report:
So there’s that.
The Knicks have been ruddy awful this season, and Anthony has played (and sometimes sat!) through injury for most of the 2014-15 quarter-season run. It hasn’t been a fun time in New York, which is why all these narratives appear plausible on the surface. Whether these sources are from some sort of Knick ally looking to paint Carmelo as duplicitous and/or unfaithful or an Anthony camper looking keep the Knick front office on edge is unclear. What is clear is that a trade involving Carmelo Anthony, this season at least, is incredibly unlikely.
Not only does Anthony boast a no-trade clause and an agent that on record flatly denied the Post’s report, but Carmelo also has a taste for New York. He wants to build some sort of moneymaking legacy in the town, even if it means he’s painted as the scoring martyr on several failed teams as he nears retirement.
(Talk of Anthony’s trade kicker is a little daffy, at least for this year. A trade kicker can’t add to a max contract, and Anthony has a max contract this season. When the salary cap bumps up over the next several years, and Anthony technically isn’t making max money, then the kicker would be established; but it’s only at a 15 percent rate, and have nothing to do with 2014-15.)
It’s hard to imagine many other teams lining up to deal for Anthony, who is now in his 30s and may need knee surgery. Teams wanted to sign him last summer, to be sure, but those same teams aren’t going to round up a litany of players to match the nearly $22.5 million Anthony is making this season in order to deal for him.
And Knick president Phil Jackson? He knew this was going to be a holdover year, even if he’d like to see more wins and better play. It’s going to take him a long time to give up on Carmelo Anthony.
Why?
Because Phil Jackson, for all his slick stylings and power broking moves behind the scenes, remains a damned hippie at heart. He’s a baby boomer, baby boomers are convinced that they’re all special snowflakes, and he thinks that he’s the Chosen One that can turn Carmelo Anthony’s career into a championship one. Along those same lines, Phil Jackson is a dogged competitor, something he learned from his ridiculously competitive mother. It’s that instinct that is also driving him to believe that he can act as Carmelo’s championship savior.
Then there is the triangle offense aspect of things. Phil Jackson thinks that it is a cure-all, and when run properly it can be. The Knicks and Carmelo Anthony are not running it properly, currently, which is where the early morning (seriously, we’re a quarter of the way into the first season of a five-year plan) criticism comes in. If run properly, the triangle offense can be the best thing to ever happen to Carmelo Anthony.
Phil Jackson knows this, which is why he threw as much money as he could at an inherited superstar that had just turned 30. Phil Jackson was not wrong in his estimation, even if this all does eventually go down in flames. He’s putting the onus on Carmelo and the players he eventually surrounds him with to play the right way.
It’s New York. It’s the Knicks. These stories are never going to go away.
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