No fan of Melo here, he does make some valid points..
http://sports.nationalpost.com/2011/01/10/the-increasingly-poor-decisions-of-carmelo-anthony/
The increasingly poor decisions of Carmelo Anthony
On a late-night bus ride in Beijing, at the 2008 Olympics, I talked with a highly respected NBA reporter who was extremely familiar with Carmelo Anthony. He said he would take Carmelo over Chris Bosh; I argued the opposite, based on Anthony’s history of boneheaded moves, mostly off the court. He just didn’t seem like someone you could trust with your franchise, I said.
Of course, the way Bosh burned bridges on the way out of Toronto, at best neither one of us was really right.
With that in mind, I’m starting to think that Carmelo Anthony could use better representation. Not to demean Leon Rose, the agent for the Denver Nuggets star, or fellow CAA powerbroker William Wesley, who is apparently also chatting away in his ear, but the decisions that Carmelo makes increasingly seem to be, er, poorly thought-out. Like, James Dolan-style.
This all started in the summer of 2006, when the stellar draft class of 2003 were deciding whether to re-sign with the teams that had chosen them. At the time, LeBron James stayed in Cleveland; Chris Bosh stayed in Toronto; Dwyane Wade stayed in Miami; Carmelo stayed in Denver. Oh, and Darko Milicic had been traded from Detroit to Orlando with Carlos Arroyo for a first-round pick and journeyman centre Kelvin Cato, whose gold Rolls Royce may have been the most cartoonishly extravagant car I have ever seen in person.
But while James, Bosh and Wade agreed to sign four-year deals with an opt-out clause after three, Carmelo stuck with a five-year deal. This, clearly, was dumb. Partly, it was dumb because the deal would carry over into the strange unknown world of a new collective bargaining agreement, which even then was believed to be headed towards more restrictive terms, and which now seems destined to be achieved after a lockout of indeterminate length and rancor.
So while LeBron, Wade and Bosh were all eligible for six-year, US$121-million contracts when they were free agents last summer — remember last summer? — Carmelo is now eligible to sign a three-year, US$65-million extension, and then another deal in a far less congenial labour environment. If he doesn’t sign by the time this CBA expires, then who knows how many millions he will lose?
As it stands, the money is not the only thing Carmelo missed. While Bosh, LeBron and Wade were putting together a team which has won 21 of its last 22 games, and which I still say will win in the neighbourhood of five championships barring catastrophic injury or a misplaced meteor, Carmelo seems destined to join … the New Jersey Nets.
Great move, Carmelo. Yeah, you wanted to go to the Knicks, but they didn’t have the trade assets after razing the village in a doomed attempt to grab LeBron. After an awfully drawn-out trade negotiation — the possible fruits of which are detailed here — it’s New Jersey.
Which means that Carmelo Anthony would make a lousy general manager, too. He reportedly has eased his hardline stance against an extension in Jersey thanks to the possible inclusion of 33-year-old shooting guard Rip Hamilton, and also his current teammate, 34-year-old point guard Chauncey Billups.
So, great. Those three, plus young and apparently regressing centre Brook Lopez, would make for an excellent sixth seed in the East, where to be out of the playoff race you essentially need to have set off a bomb in your locker room (see: Cleveland). The Nets are 10-27 now, and made such canny acquisitions this summer as Travis Outlaw (five years, US$35-million, .379 shooting, 12.0 points per game), along with Anthony Morrow and Johan Petro, who will be sent away if the trade goes through. Oh, and Outlaw essentially plays Carmelo’s position, by the way.
So what I’m saying is that Carmelo Anthony has made mistakes, and seems destined to make more. Forget the possibility of signing Chris Paul in 2012 for a minute; ignore the Nets’ pending move to Brooklyn. This is a franchise with a rookie owner and a retread general manager (Billy King, who didn’t exactly maximize the Allen Iverson era in Philly, the 2001 Finals appearance notwithstanding), and that has just about no hope of getting into the weight category of the Miami Heat.
Had he not gone for the five-year deal in 2006, Carmelo could have landed in New York with Amare Stoudemire, or with a New Jersey team that didn’t have to send away it’s No. 3 overall pick to get him. Hell, he could have landed with Blake Griffin and the Clippers. He could have enjoyed the whirl of the chase in the mad summer of 2010, rather than boxed himself into a corner as the lockout of 2011 looms ever nearer.
Instead, Denver is trying to squeeze every penny, and New Jersey is putting together a second-rate squad — we haven’t even mentioned a long-term extension for Billups, which is a terrible idea — and really, if Rip Hamilton was the tiebreaker, Denver could just trade for him and keep Carmelo, right? Well, except ‘Melo’s wife, MTV personality LaLa, apparently wants to be closer to New York. As Ken Berger of CBS Sports tweeted, “Rival team exec on Melo’s rationale: “He wants the money and he wants to be in New York. He gets the city he wants for the money he wants.”
So there you have it. Say what you will about LeBron and Bosh and Wade, and Lord knows everybody has, but they’re trying to forge a dynasty. For Carmelo, meanwhile — well, forget winning, forget good teams, forget championships. It’s the shallow end of the NBA pool, is what it is, and someone should convince him different. But good advice, it seems, can be hard to find.
1/10/2011 4:12 PM