Carmelo Anthony Trade Saga Wears On Nuggets Fans

Mikhail Prokhorov and the New Jersey Nets have walked away from a Carmelo Anthony trade, which means that Anthony is still with the Denver Nuggets. For Nuggets fans tired of having to deal with all the rumors and speculation about Anthony’s future, that’s a frustrating thing, even if Anthony is a great player.

Andrew Feinstein writes on SB Nation’s Nuggets blog Denver Stiffs that the amount of coverage surrounding the whole saga shows what’s wrong with the NBA right now.

Bring on the lockout.

Bring on the franchise tag.

The system is broken.

The two most dramatic moments of the 2010-11 NBA season came on July 8th and January 19th. The first date being when LeBron James callously announced to the world that he had hand-picked the Heat to be his next NBA destination, and the second being when Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov announced that any deal for Carmelo Anthony would be nixed. That’s right, the second most dramatic moment of the 2010-11 NBA season came from a press conference announcing something that wasn’t happening.

That may be a bit of an overreaction, but I understand the sentiment. The whole thing seemed so forced, which is why it probably fell short in the end. I sympathize with Nuggets fans who just want to move on already.

Feinstein also has several theories about why the trade didn’t happen. First things first, he pointed the finger at Anthony’s handlers, William Wesley and Leon Rose, for pushing an agenda that Anthony didn’t seem fully in line with following. Feinstein also blamed the public nature of the negotiations, which he thinks slowed down all the trade proposals and caused there to be so many iterations to the original offer. Finally, Feinstein pointed the finger at Anthony himself for not being clear about his true desires.

But in the end, the real point of the article is the frustration with the system. Feinstein summed that frustration up at the end of the article.

The whole situation points to a league-wide system that’s broken, ranging from how revenue is shared among owners themselves to the collective bargaining agreement between the owners and their players. The only way to dampen this type of drama is to institute a system where all 30 NBA teams can actually make money and keep their superstars, too.

Here’s hoping that eventually happens.