No Extension For Carmelo?
So if we are to believe a report on Hoops World today then one might think Denver Nuggets forward Carmelo Anthony might be serious about forming his own super team next summer. According to Alex Kennedy of Hoops World, ‘Melo won’t be signing the extension that Denver has had sitting on the table for him. If this is true it could work for and against him.
How can it work for him, well he could get his wish to play for a NBA Championship. Denver was the fourth best team in the Western Conference but didn’t quite have the pieces to push them past the Los Angeles Lakers. By hitting the free agent market he can join one of the many teams who still have a ton of cap space left over, like say the New York Knicks. Hmmm.
He could easily go to N.Y. and team up with Amare Stoudemire and hope the team can add a All-Star caliber point guard. They would then challenge the Miami Heat for Eastern conference supremacy. That’s all hypothetical of course, but it has been something talked about all summer.
What’s more interesting to me thou is how this can work against Anthony.
There is a potential lockout in the NBA next summer, which could easily change the financial landscape of the game. The owners are looking to scale back the insane dollar amounts that are going out to players, which means there is a chance Carmelo doesn’t get any offer close to three year, $65 million sitting on the table. Even the Nuggets themselves might not be able to offer that.
Once this new bargaining agreement is signed it may even effect the Knicks ability to give him a big contract and form their own “Big 3″ in New York, which is what he really wants.
So Carmelo is playing his own version of high stakes poker right now. He’s betting on things not changing and that he gets to have his cake and eat it too. Will it happen? I’m not quite sure. All I do now is there will be one huge fight next offseason between the union and owners.
Hopefully for Anthony and us Knicks fans, the union wins out cause if not he could wind up the biggest loser next summer.
