vdfebduderocks wrote:one important paragraph in the article:Bill Simmons wrote:All in all, that was a catastrophic trade considering Denver didn’t have any leverage whatsoever. And it happened because Carmelo wanted more money — the same choice he made last weekend, again, and the same choice you and I would probably make too. Carmelo inadvertently created the narrative that threatens to defines him. There’s a good chance he will play his entire career, then retire, without ever finding the right team. Unless the Knicks miraculously strike oil next summer, his own version of the 2011 Mavericks can’t happen. His prime will come and go, and that will be that.
Now let me ask you this:
If I take everyone on the RealGM board from Rasho to the corpse of TKF & dk7th, Shammgod, Thugger, GoNYK, KT, Thorn, Yardie, Greenie, MoneySnitch, Stats, and everyone else, put yourselves back into Carmelo Anthony's shoes in 2011.
Yes, your agents might have been dumb in extending your contract one more year, but still, it's 2011. There's an impending lockout. The country is in the midst of an soso economy. You can potentially secure yourself in a nice contract for 3 more years. Or you wait until free agency, wait until the lockout ends, or doesn't, and then you wait for the new CBA which could have any random effects on your salary.
Would anyone say no to the money? I would like someone to admit that they would actually hold out till free agency. I dare someone to stand up to that.
Much harder to do when it's your wallet on the line, but I honestly did not think they were going to reduce Maxes much at all, and said so here a million times, and they didn't.
But if I had risk, I'd be extra cautious. The problem is that the NBA stars all completely believed that they were going to let the best players under contract stay at a high number over $20M and make the guys signing new contracts dip considerably. I called B.S. on it. Didn't happen. NBA would never have had such an asymmetrical system, so maybe if reason ruled the day a little more than panic did, Melo might've come cheaper.
By the way, the salary cap experts like Coon said it was going to happen too.