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NYDN — A deal that would end the Carmelo Anthony era in New York and reunite the All-Star forward with Mike D’Antoni in Houston “is at the two-yard line,” a person familiar with the trade negotiations told the Daily News.
On Wednesday, ESPN reported that the Knicks and Rockets are trying to recruit a fourth team into a proposed deal to facilitate a blockbuster trade. The deal needs to be expanded due to Anthony’s contract and because the Knicks are opposed to acquiring Rockets forward Ryan Anderson.
Cool. Cool. No way this goes bad, right?
Now… since this does look pretty inevitable… I’m a little torn here.
On the one hand, this is absolutely going to be a bad return. How bad? We’ll find out. But what we know is there’s no possible way to recoup equal “value” to Carmelo. Regardless of what you think of him and his leadership and his defense and all the other Melo tropes that we’ve had beaten into us the last six years here, he is better at basketball than all the other possible pieces the Knicks will get in return. That doesn’t mean better for this team. It simply means that when you look at Melo the basketball player versus the player(s) the Knicks get in return, it will look like a lopsided deal.
That sucks. Giving up a tangible, valuable asset (which he very much still is, especially in the role he’ll be going into) for pennies on the dollar is a loss.
On the other hand… like fine let’s just move on already.
It’s going to be a bad deal. We’ll probably get some bad contracts back in return. None of the holes (veteran PG, forward depth, a new front office) will be filled.
But the Melo era will be over.
As long as we don’t give up any picks or any of the building blocks (which I guess are really just Willy, Kuz, and the rookies) I’m fine with it. I can live with losing the trade.
So we take on some bad contracts? No premium free agent is signing with the Knicks in the near future, and if anything it prevents Mills from signing more bad contracts (just kidding, it doesn’t).
Moving Melo finally lets the team move forward. No more Triangle. No more Melo iso ball. No more expectations (however preposterous they are) that will inevitably fail to be met.
It’s rock bottom… but a good rock bottom. Rebuild the offense around KP and reload the roster through the draft. It’s a reset button that just two months ago seemed basically impossible between Melo’s No-Trade Clause and Dolan picking up the last two years of Phil’s contract
Yes, Dolan and Mills will obviously continue to stand in the way. There’s really nothing we can do about that.
But we’ll be moving into 2017-18 with No Phil and No Melo. And even if their replacements (Steve Mills and some bad contracts) stink, that’s still a huge, huge win for a team desperately in need of one.
I don’t know. I’m sure they’ll fuck this up by the time I press post. But all we’ve really got right now is fake hope and Kristaps workout videos.
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