Carmelo Anthony May Save Money With A Trade, But Not That Much

It began as a mystery. Does Carmelo Anthony want to be traded? Then, we learned that, yes, Carmelo wanted to go to the New York Knicks, but he’d have to play with the Nuggets for at least part of the season. And it became a soap opera. Then it became a saga—will the Nuggets ever trade this guy? Now, it’s fair to say all this “Melodrama” is just straight up comedy.

Need proof? Throughout the entire proccess, we’ve been operating under the assumption that by signing a contract extension this season, Carmelo would be saving boatloads of money. It’d allow him to sign for a max contract before a potential NBA lockout and the new collective bargaining agreement that will come with it. Makes sense, right?

A little too much sense. At CBS Sports, Ken Berger makes some excellent points about this flawed theory. Namely, that no matter what Carmelo signs this year, there’s a chance the owners could include a provision in the next collective bargaining agreement that’d roll back salaries on all max contracts. In other words, “he’s just the whole pre-empting the new CBA!” argument could be completely nonsense. Carmelo, of course, has no idea this is even a possibility.

Anthony’s advisers have neglected to tell him is that rolling back existing contracts to fit the new hard-cap system also is part of the owners’ proposal. ... According to a person involved in the formation of Anthony’s strategy, he is unaware that the owners’ proposal would make the three-year, $65 million extension Anthony would get as part of an extend-and-trade a moot point.

In other words, even Carmelo hasn’t considered this part of the equation. And even if rolling back max contracts turns out to be nothing more than an empty threat from NBA owners, the idea that ‘Melo would lose tens of millions with a new CBA is just as flimsy.

Berger--one of the only reporters to call BS on the Carmelo-Nets trade all along--crunched the numbers to help explain what a new CBA might look like. You can digest the details over at CBS Sports, but the key takeaway is this: Carmelo won’t be losing that much money no matter what happens. Ultimately, if Carmelo hits the open market with a new CBA setting the parameters for a max contract, he’ll sacrifice around $5 million. As Berger writes, it’s the big, dirty secret that everyone’s been ignoring throughout this process:

Everyone who was trying to get Anthony traded to New Jersey was hoping he’d never figure this out. It was the best deal for Denver, because the Nets had the most attractive assets to offer. It was the best deal for New Jersey, because they would’ve gotten a Brooklyn-born star to open their new building in that borough in 2012. It was the best deal for Detroit, which would’ve dumped Richard Hamilton and the $25 million left on his contract over the next two years. It was the best deal for Anthony’s agents at Creative Artists Agency, who by delivering Anthony -- and, no doubt, promising Chris Paul in 2012 -- would effectively have been running the Nets organization from that day forward.

The best part? We still don’t know whether Carmelo Anthony has actually figured out that he can afford to hit free agency without costing himself a fortune. For all we know, he just really, really didn’t want to go to the Nets. So much so that he was willing to give up 10 or 20 million dollars. Which, again—hilarious.