Goodbye, 'Melo Brick Road

Before we begin, can I just say that I really hope that this headline wins the award for “Most Retarded Carmelo Anthony Trade Saga Headline?”

Finally, Carmelo Anthony has been traded to the New York Knicks, and thank fucking Christ that this whole mess is finally over with. I had just about reached my limit for wild speculation and interviews given with sunglasses on.

According to the Denver Post, the Nuggets have received Danilo Gallinari, Wilson Chandler, Ray Felton, Timofey Mozgov, the Knicks 2014 first round pick, and two second round picks from the Warriors.

The Knicks will receive Carmelo, Chauncey Billups, Shelden Williams, Renaldo Balkman, and Anthony Carter.

In other words, the Knicks just shit all over the bed.

I don’t say this because the trade is a lopsided one, but because the Knicks should have been able to steal Carmelo from the Nuggets for next to nothing. Instead, they had to give away 3/5 of their starting rotation and a Russian guy who’s face has been smashed into Blake Griffin’s testicles, which is actually a good thing as far as I’m concerned, because…I mean…those are Blake Griffin's nuts.

Anyone who isn’t half of a derp has known for months that Carmelo only ever wanted to play for the Knicks. He didn’t want to play with the Nuggets, he didn’t want to end up on the Lakers, and he sure as shit didn’t want to agree to a trade to the Nets. Honestly, why would Carmelo agree to play in New Jersey with Brook Lopez and a bunch of D-Leaguers? Unless of course he was really interested in having Lopez teach him all about Anime and how to awkwardly talk to girls. (I enjoy conceptualizing Brook Lopez as a gigantic child, kind of like Tom Hanks from Big)

All the Knicks had to do was wait the Nuggets out. They should have stood strong, and told the Nuggets that if they weren’t willing to trade them Carmelo now, they could just wait until the off season and sign Carmelo without losing anything. Yes, I am aware that Carmelo stood to lose a lot of money if he signed as a free agent under the soon to be renegotiated collective bargaining agreement, and that he could only keep his max contract by getting the Nuggets to agree to a trade. Still, this does not mean that the Nuggets had any kind of leverage over the Knicks.

“If you don’t give us what we want for Carmelo, we will just let him join your team as a free agent next summer, but we will totally dick him out of 15 million dollars first, BITCHES!” is not an effective bargaining strategy.

Unless of course you are bargaining with the Knicks, who apparently believed that the Nuggets were willing to lose Carmelo without getting jack squat in return out of sheer spite.

If the Knicks had just been patient, the Nuggets would have traded Carmelo for whatever they could get, because getting something is a hell of a lot better than getting nothing at all and whatever righteous satisfaction may have come from fucking with Carmelo’s money.

The Nuggets handled this whole situation rather brilliantly as they were A) Able to convince the Knicks that there were other possible trade destinations for Carmelo, and B) Able to convince Carmelo that they were willing to not trade him at all, taking him and the rest of the franchise down in a fiery crash.

In the end Carmelo seemed to panic just as badly as the Knicks did. Why else would he agree to meet with Nets ownership this past weekend, or make statements about “being screwed” if he didn’t get his extension. If he had just stayed calm, and made it very clear that he would only play for the Knicks, he’d be playing with much better teammates right now.

Now, I’m not saying that this was a “bad” trade for the Knicks. It’s never a bad thing to have two superstars on your team, and they are now set up pretty nicely to make a run at Chris Paul or Deron Willias in 2012. I’m just saying that it could have been a much better trade if the Knicks, and Carmelo, had just had enough balls to call the Nuggets’ bluff.

Instead, the Nuggets turned what should have been Wilson Chandler, Eddy Curry, and some draft picks into a pretty solid cache of assets--assets that could still belong to the Knicks right now.

There really isn’t anything that the Nuggets should have done differently. Well, there is one thing. They should have benched Carmelo at the start of the season, played him 3 minutes a game, and hired Joaquin Phoenix to do this right in his face every time he sat down on the bench. That would have been pretty cool.