cgmw wrote:Falstaffxx wrote:What does that have to do with what he said about Melo's likelihood of extending with a team he has no interest in playing for?
It's a fair assumption that Carmelo would like to get paid as much as possible, right? Well Denver is the only team that can make that happen. Whether or not he "has no interest in playing for" Denver, Denver has leverage. Whether or not Denver ends up with "scraps" or a TPE, it's still not in their best interest to abandon ship in February.
All kinds of things could happen between February and July. Again, I repeat: The possibility of re-signing Carmelo is very valuable to Denver. I'd be shocked if they traded him for anything less than two or three young players/picks plus salary relief. Anything less than that just isn't worth it. You wait it out and hope for something changes before July.
Sure, it's fair to assume that Carmelo wants to be paid as much as possible, but it's also fair to assume that he wants to be back near family, especially after his sister's death. Or be back in his hometown of NY (he grew up in Baltimore, but there was an article a few months ago how he was still called "Little New York" while growing up in Baltimore). Or play with his good friend Amare Stoudemire.
We just saw 3 superstars take less money to play in Miami. We saw another in baseball forego extra guaranteed years to play in Philadelphia. I'm surprised there are people who still argue that it's all about the money for these players when they're already guaranteed to be making tens of millions.
Melo's going to get his max in the new CBA, and you don't have to be an expert or an insider to negotiations to make an educated guess that a max contract is not going to really go down that much -- no more than say $1-2M per year. And if it's more than that, you can be sure that owners will look to apply it retroactively to old contracts, making Melo's extension moot.
So is it also fair to assume that Melo would be willing to risk an extra $6-10M for the chance to play in his desired city, with his friend in Stoudemire, and on a possible contender? I'd say so. Denver's going to lose leverage as they approach the deadline if Melo maintains this stance, as they'll be the ones who are desperate to get a deal done, while NY can just wait till FA.