There is no question that in the world of professional basketball, this past summer was the Summer of Lebron. But as the buzz around the king wears off, Denver Nuggets forward Carmelo Anthony has stepped up to take over the spotlight.
Anthony has been in the news in recent weeks after reportedly demanding to be traded. Unlike James’sformer team, the Nuggets have a good supporting cast for the Brooklyn-born star. Still, it seems like Anthony wants to leave for brighter lights in a bigger city—New York, Chicago, and New Jersey (Brooklyn in two years) are all reportedly on his short list of destinations.
But why does he want to leave now? Did he get the itch to move after seeing Lebron form a team of superstars in a first-rate city? Or had the media cooked up this story from scratch?
Here is what we know: although Anthony is not a free agent until after the 2010-11 season, he still wields a lot of power. He is in the position to control where the Nuggets trade him because his contract only lasts for one season, and as a result, opposing teams are not willing to trade the Nuggets their best players for Anthony without him agreeing on an extension with their team. It wouldn’t make any sense for the Chicago Bulls to trade away Joakim Noah or all-star guard Derrick Rose, only to see Anthony leave after one year.
Anthony alone can veto any trade the Nuggets want to make. And the longer the Nuggets wait to trade him, the less leverage they have, because he doesn’t want to sign an extension with them.
Last week, the Nets seemed to have successfully made a four-team deal to land the forward by giving up first round pick Derrick Favors and Devin Harris. As of Tuesday night, the deal was dead, for unknown reasons. There have been reports that the Nuggets backed out because they weren’t satisfied with who they were going to receive for their franchise player. With the proposed trade, they would have not only have lost Anthony, but they would have lost money too. It is never good when a team becomes worse and poorer in the same year.
Although that’s a fair conclusion, there’s another believable explanation: that Anthony slowly became unwilling to go to New Jersey and pulled himself out of the deal. He realized New Jersey wasn’t a place he wanted to spend most of—if not the rest of—his career. Then he saw that the Knicks, his first choice, didn’t have the assets to get the Nuggets to bite on a deal before the season starts. His apparent second choice, the Bulls, don’t want to part with Joakim Noah. After reaching this conclusion, Anthony stepped back from the situation and thought about spending one last season with Denver.
“At the end of the season, I’ll sit down with my team, I’ll sit down with the Nuggets, and we’ll talk about it,” Anthony said at media day on Monday. “I’ve never said I wanted to be traded. I never once said anything about trade talk.”
Who knows if there is any truth to his statement? If Anthony never asked to be traded, what was all the media attention for? At the end of the season he will become a free agent, and his top choices won’t have to trade anything for him—they’ll just need to take out their checkbook. And if Anthony can wait out the winter and the spring, he’ll have what any NBA superstar could ask for: a whole summer dedicated to himself.
