NBA Trades: The New York Knicks Are Still Not Contenders With Carmelo Anthony
Tonight a trade went down to send former Denver Nuggets forward Carmelo Anthony to the New York Knicks, his preferred destination. While it always looks good to add a perennial All-Star to your team, will 'Melo make the team that much better?
Here are the details of the trade:
New York gets—Carmelo Anthony, Chauncey Billups, Shelden Williams, Anthony Carter, Renaldo Balkman
Denver gets—Wilson Chandler, Raymond Felton, Danilo Gallinari, Timofey Mozgov, Knicks 2014 First Rounder, Warriors 2012 and 2013 Second Rounders and $3 million
Despite the big names preparing to join the Knicks, the cost of the trade means that New York has not actually poised itself for contention in the short or long term.
Salary Situation
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It is expected that Carmelo Anthony will agree to the three-year $65 million dollar extension that is on the table once he reaches New York. Once he signs that, he will make an average of $21.7 million a year over the life of the contract. That means that Amar'e and 'Melo will combine to make somewhere around 40 million dollars a year.
That's the situation right now. Imagine if the salary situation changed, and the salary cap was at 50 million dollars. That's 80% of your cap. Even as is, this is 2/3 of your salary cap. You cannot build a championship team around a player with only 20 million dollars.
Limited Improvement
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This is the team the Knicks will have for a loooooong time. 'Melo obviously isn't going anywhere for good reason, and Amar'e's contract is completely untradable even if the Knicks tried. The team being average is even contingent on Amar'e's knees.
Other than the big two, the rest of the team is stuck as well. Landry Fields is really the only true asset still on the roster, and he's not going anywhere. Spike Lee will make sure of that. The rest of the bench does not have enough salary to be able to legitimately get any players through free agency or trade.
The Knicks are only an above average Eastern Conference Playoff team as it stands right now, and have no way of improving except for Billups' non-guaranteed contract. And as we've seen with Eddy Curry, expiring contracts by themselves really aren't worth anything.
They're Like the Heat...Without Dwyane Wade and Defense
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The idea for the meetup of 'Melo and Amar'e came from the actions of this summer by the Miami Heat. LeBron James and Chris Bosh took advantage of their free agent status and signed on to play with fellow superstar Dwyane Wade. They have been performing a little bit worse than expected: they are dominant at times but not quite the unstoppable powerhouse that many people envisioned.
This team is like a poor man's Miami Heat. Instead of best-player-in-the-league LeBron, you have Carmelo Anthony. Now don't get me wrong, 'Melo is a top 15 player in the NBA, and a player I would love to have on my team. However all he does is score. He's not a good defender. He's not a good passer. He's an above average rebounder, but nothing special, and nothing like LeBron.
Instead of Chris Bosh, you have Amar'e Stoudemire. Stoudemire is better than Bosh. He has the ability to be the central focus of his team on offense and he is a true leader. However similar to Anthony, Amar'e is bad at doing the little things. He's one of the worst defenders in the league despite his high block totals. He's injury prone because he had microfracture knee surgery a few years ago.
And the only person who could even pretend to be Dwyane Wade on the Knicks is Chauncey Billups, and obviously we shouldn't even talk about them in the same sentence again.
Offensive Stagnation
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The Mike D'Antoni system of basketball has been dubbed "Seven Seconds or Less." The concept is that his team will run down the court and throw up a shot before the shot clock has ticked seven seconds.
On his teams, they have a player often that can work for the offense if they can't get up a good shot. Except for the short period when it was David Lee in New York, it has generally been Amar'e Stoudemire playing that role.
The system works pretty well when you have a true distributor and a dominant scorer. However how well will the system work when the point guard looks to score and you have two players who do nothing but score on it? Unfortunately I don't believe very well.
Carmelo Anthony is not a fast-tempo player. He's just not. He's a player who stops the ball when he gains possession. A vast majority of his offense comes on isos and post ups, the two plays that stop the ball the most. Those two plays are very effective and very efficient, but it's just not Mike D'Antoni basketball, especially from the small forward position.
Lack Of Depth
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The Knicks current lineup:
PG—Chauncey Billups, Toney Douglas
SG—Landry Fields, Potentially Corey Brewer
SF—Carmelo Anthony, Shawne Williams
You get down to here and they don't look THAT bad. Sure, their bench is a weakness, but it's not something that can't be overcome. Unfortunately then you get to their big men positions...
PF—Amar'e Stoudemire, Shawne Williams...?
C—Ronny Turiaf, then what...?
They literally have two true big men on their roster. One of these is Amar'e Stoudemire who is of course a pretty good player. However once you get past that, who comes off the bench...ever? Turiaf isn't even really that much of a center, but he's forced to play big minutes now.
Conclusions
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I beg you to not misinterpret this article. The Knicks will be improved up to perhaps the level that they were during the 90s. However the problem is that the situation will be similar to the 90s: they'll get to the second round, Knicks fans think they're almost there, but there's just teams that completely outclass them (i.e the Bulls of the 90s).
The Knicks would be pretty good, but they honestly still aren't good enough. They will score a million points per game but unfortunately they could allow a million as well. They will get out-rebounded by good teams and they could allow multiple Blake Griffin-esque highlights every game because of lack of defensive effort.
They'll be there in the playoffs every year but they won't be a championship team.
