Carmelo Anthony met with his representatives on Friday night to discuss his upcoming free agency. Anthony had dinner with a group of six people that included Leon Rose and William Wesley. The New York Knicks are viewed as the favorite to re-sign Anthony, who is expected to receive interest from the Houston Rockets, Chicago Bulls, Los Angeles Lakers and Dallas Mavericks. Read more http://nypost.com/2014/05/26/knicks-still-among-faves-for-carmelo-anthony/
As we all pretty much agree Melo would max his ring chances with Chicago, a healthy Rose and a reasonably intact roster. I think we also agree that Melo will max his profits and stay in a losing situation. Players are Scrooge McDucks who put $ over winning even more than boogie man chairmen.
Magic Johnson is worth $500M+. He made $18M playing basketball. Jordan wanted to be paid more than anyone else. It was a competitiveness thing, not a greed thing. Jordan is worth $650M. He made $93.7M playing basketball, $63.3M of that his last two seasons with the Bulls. Not all owners are greedy like our Chairman. Are there any teams that avoid the Luxury Tax like the Bulls have? No! The Nets are going to pay $70M in tax this season, and there are several other owners who've paid big tax bills all along. Tim Duncan is making $10M this year. He took a much lower salary so the team could afford to add better players. You never know.
Melo will be a start, and we need to start somewhere. We need a spark plug, volume scorer or two off of the bench to compete with the teams out there. If we don't get a Melo, or even a Love, we have a much harder way to get to the goal.
Some quotes from Melo: http://espn.go.com/new-york/nba/sto...ng-most-important-factor-free-agency-decision
Without Rose we won almost 50 games. If he takes a pay cut, with him and Rose(being a good guard, not even close to MVP form) Who is to say we dont go far next season? We would go much further than NY will for sure! Then bring Mirotic over next season, we will be primed for a real run! Rose should be even better if he doesn't get himself hurt again.
I still don't think we've seen any reason to think this off season will be different. Anthony expressing interest in a franchise like the Bulls looks exactly the same as Anthony negotiating his next deal with the Knicks. If Anthony was really leaving for the Bulls I'd almost expect him to say nothing at all instead of making all these veiled allusions.
