The Spotlight Turns to Carmelo Anthony

The bulk of his game is still built around his high volume scoring abilities. However don’t want to bash him either as he will play defense now at times (was better the last several years) and rebounds the ball well at his position.

He’ll likely command both too much money in a contract and too much value in a trade so it’d probably be best for the Hornets to stay out of the fray. Besides, I can’t recall too many teams winning the whole thing with a high scoring small forward (Dominique Wilkins or Alex English to name a few) leading the way outside of Larry Bird.

I just love all these rumors about how players are using the “doing what’s best for me and my family” clause in their reputations and exercising it to “supposedly” ask for a chance to be a member of the New York Knicks, all this according to “sources” and where the “signs point.” Ridiculous.

For two years, we heard LeBron James is going to be a Knick. That didn’t work. About a week later, Chris Paul wanted to be a New York Knick. That, too, got squashed. Now all of a sudden, Carmelo Anthony wants to be a Knick. This is getting ridiculous.

How much of this is players wanting to go to New York and how much of this is media wanting them to go there?

It is entirely ridiculous regardless of the circumstances. Because Carmelo Anthony and Chris Paul are not free agents, and because the Knicks swung and missed on LeBron James this summer, we’ve now had all this speculation about what players want to go play for New York this summer simply because they couldn’t get LeBron. No player has come out and said they want to play for the Knicks. Eva Longria saying Tony Parker wants to is the closest we’ve got to that. So the notion that “sources” and “signs pointing to” players wanting to play in New York is legitimate enough to continue to run these asinine and proven untrue stories is getting ridiculous.

http://games.espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=2aahl2s

Hornets get a superstar to pair with CP3, along with a young, reliable backup PG in Lawson

Nuggets get two expirings, to save cap space, along with young talent in Brackins.

On the NBA Rumors over at ESPN (the worldwide leader in sports..I heard you get a dollar everytime you add that) but anyway they had this rumor up:

A few weeks back, we speculated the with some smart roster and financial moves, the Hornets could perhaps position themselves to make a run at Carmelo Anthony in free agency next summer.

After all, such a coup could mean Chris Paul might be more likely to stay with the team beyond the summer of 2012.

And now that Anthony could be on the trade block, we suppose it’s time to re-explore what the Hornets could do to acquire him in such a fashion.

Outside of Paul, the Hornets don’t have that attractive of pieces, especially when you consider they just traded Darren Collison, who shined in his rookie season when Paul was out with injury.

Yet, David West could give Denver some value in the frontcourt, and Peja Stojakovic’s expiring contract could give Denver some more flexibility going forward.

If the Nuggets were getting West in return, it’s possible they’d be agreeable to parting with Chris Andersen.

Andersen and Melo for Peja and West works in ESPN’s NBA Trade Machine.

Yet, the Nuggets have essentially traded Anthony and Andersen for West in this scenario, and it’s likely they can get better value and pieces from another team.

As such, we’ll call New Orleans as a bit of stretch for his services via a trade right now.