Carmelo Anthony To the New York Knicks Finally a Done Deal, What's Next?
To the surprise of absolutely no one, Carmelo Anthony is finally headed to the New York Knicks.
Everyone, from Benjamin Hochman and Chris Dempsey of the Denver Post to Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports and Chris Broussard of ESPN, is reporting that 'Melo will be shipped off to the Big Apple, along with a posse of Nuggets that includes Chauncey Billups, Renaldo Balkman, Shelden Williams and Anthony, in exchange for, well, the Knicks' entire future.
And by their entire future, I mean Danilo Gallinari, Wilson Chandler, Raymond Felton, Timofey Mozgov, a first-round draft pick, two second-round draft picks and $3 million in cash.
Oh, and don't forget about the part wherein the Knickerbockers will send Anthony Randolph and the (finally) expiring contract of bust-of-all-busts Eddy Curry to Minnesota just so the Timberwolves will pass Corey Brewer, another underwhelming young player, to the Rocky Mountains.
Feel free to gasp, sigh, chuckle, cry, howl, wail, holler or engage in any combination of the aforementioned verbal exclamations.
After months of speculation, from respectively prophetic and awkward toasts from Chris Paul and Nuggets owner Stan Kroenke at Anthony's wedding this past summer to the umpteen times the New Jersey Nets tried (and failed) to swoop in, our long national nightmare is finally over!
So now what?
Now that Denver GM Masai Ujiri has officially fleeced New York of its young talent, courtesy of Isiah Thomas' purported puppetry of clumsy Knicks owner James Dolan, what are we to make of the team that Mike D'Antoni has left to coach and that Donnie Walsh has to reassemble?
What are we to make of the rebuilding Nuggets, without a bona fide superstar but now flush with valuable assets just waiting to be traded?
And what of the Nets, who fought so "valiantly" to land themselves a franchise player but ended up getting rebuffed, first by the Nuggets and then by Carmelo himself?
The Knicks: No Youth + No Defense = No Future?
Let's start with the Knicks, who spent the first half of the season as one of the league's most pleasant surprises. With Amar'e Stoudemire proving his worth as a lone star in the middle, surrounded by young shooters and scorers, D'Antoni's team had the look of a team on the upswing after years of mismanagement and mediocrity following the Patrick Ewing era.
New York came into the All-Star break with a 28-26 record and a two-game cushion as the sixth seed in the East. Maybe not the most impressive resume in the league, but certainly a big step up after the spectacular failures of the regimes of Scott Layden and Isiah Thomas.
Stoudemire and the Knicks brought the excitement back to Madison Square Garden under D'Antoni's up-and-down system and looked poised to hold on to a playoff berth, with or without an Extreme Makeover: 'Melo Edition.
How New York does from here on out is anyone's guess.
Offensively, there's no doubt that the Knicks will be a formidable team. D'Antoni will have two fantastic scorers at his disposal and, if he's smart, will use Carmelo as the second option, much as Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski did with Anthony during Team USA's run to the gold medal at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
Few teams in the league will be able to contain both superstars on any given night, though the absence of young gunners like Gallinari and Chandler means the Knicks will have to rely rather disproportionately on Amar'e and 'Melo to get it done every single game.
Furthermore, the addition of five-time All-Star Chauncey Billups is a significant upgrade at the point, at least for the present, as Billups carries with him an absolute wealth of clutch experience, as evidenced by his NBA Finals MVP, along with a dead-eye perimeter shot, a steady hand on the ball and solid defensive ability in the back court.
The same can hardly be said of the Knicks' front court defense. Individually, Stoudemire and Anthony are among the league's laziest defenders, with each long maligned for focusing too intently on scoring while sacrificing defensive effort. Together, the New York's front line projects as perhaps the most porous of any in the NBA.
Not that D'Antoni's teams have ever won with defense.
However, as the old saying goes, defense wins championships, and with an expected dearth of the former, long-suffering Knicks fans like Spike Lee can hardly expect any of the latter anytime soon.
The Nuggets: A Bright Tomorrow in the Mile-High City
'Melo's departure is as much a relief as it is a disappointment for the Nuggets organization as well as the city of Denver as a whole.
Anthony, along with the persistent rumors and rumblings that surrounded him, had become a bigger and bigger drain on the franchise as the season dragged on, particularly in recent weeks as 'Melo piled up points at the expense of the team's viability.
Now that Carmelo is officially gone, the Nuggets, much like the Washington Wizards with Gilbert Arenas before them, can move on with their lives and their collective pursuit of a better seed in the playoffs.
Though George Karl will be hard-pressed to find any one player to fill the void left behind by No. 15 (now No. 13 in New York), but that's not to say that his cupboard will exactly be bare.
The Nuggets will now be far young and far more athletic, thanks to the arrivals of Chandler, Gallinari and Mozgov, along with the "switcheroo" of Ray Felton in for Billups.
The one big drawback, of course, is that young Ty Lawson will no longer have the wise and fostering shoulder of Billups to lean on and learn from. though Lawson's preferred style of play more closely resembles that of Felton, a fellow Tar Heel who, in fact, preceded Lawson at North Carolina.
All in all, the Nuggets won't be contending for NBA titles any time soon, but are now swimming in young players and tradable pieces. In other words, look for Denver to keep dealing.
The Nets: Brooklyn-Bound and Down, But Far From Out
One team with whom the Nuggets could very well partner, ironically enough, is New Jersey.
After falling flat on their faces in their relentless pursuit of Carmelo Anthony, the Fightin' Mikhail Prokhorov's are reportedly looking to poach some of the Knicks' former assets, possibly Mozgov and Felton, Chandler or Gallinari, with some combination of draft picks and the expiring contract of Troy Murphy.
Either way, New Jersey has done plenty to sully itself as a franchise in pursuit of respectability. From their failed negotiations and botched closed-door meetings off the court to their actual struggles as a team on the court, in the form of a sparklingly mediocre record of 17-40 on the season.
Though far ahead of last year's miserable pace, the Nets still have a long way to go under first-year dictator Avery Johnson. So long as the front office is trying to rid itself of Devin Harris and Brook Lopez continues to pull down a paltry 5.8 rebounds per game as a seven-footer, New Jersey will remain the butt of every basketball joke in the Tri-State area.
The team's rebounding woes should be somewhat alleviated by the continued growth of rookie forward Derrick Favors, who will likely be around the shepherd the team in its eventual move to Brooklyn.
What the Nets do with their wealth of potentially desirable resources remains to be seen.
What's more certain, at least for now, is that life in the NBA can finally proceed as dysfunctionally as, if not more so than, it did before all of this 'Melo-drama began.
