The Los Angeles Lakers are riding an eight-game winning streak as they head into their match-up against the Miami Heat tonight. The two teams are going in completely opposite directions right now as the Lakers have regained championship form since the All-Star Break while the Miami Heat are facing a five-game skid with several [...]
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The New Orleans Hornets entered their Wednesday night game against the Dallas Mavericks undermanned with their leader and star Chris Paul sitting out a second straight game due to concussion like symptoms, so when the Carl Landry fouled out and Jarret Jack and Emeka Okafor each collected their fifth personal fouls, it didn’t look [...] On today’s very busy NBA slate, there are two nationally televised games. The first will be a battle of Western Conference powers as the Los Angeles Lakers travel to Oklahoma City to take on the Thunder in a rematch of their epic first round playoff series from last year. The second game, which tips [...] For people like myself that thought the Carmelo Anthony-Amare Stoudemire pairing would be an awkward one with many bumps in the road, the first half of last night’s game between the New York Knicks and Milwaukee Bucks provided plenty of fodder. Anthony was isolating far too often, he was forcing things at the basket [...] Carmelo Anthony is a New York Knick. After months of speculation and rumors, it feels good to finally say it officially. Here is the deal that has been reported by Yahoo! Sports and the Denver Post: Carmelo Anthony, Chauncey Billups, Shelden Williams, Anthony Carter and Renaldo Balkman are headed to New York for Danilo [...]
Whether these opposing GMs are waiting on the Nuggets because they want to make sure Denver is going to sell before they ask for one of their other players or because they want to know if they need to make a move themselves to keep up with Denver, there is clearly a lot riding on the Anthony situation that goes beyond just the two teams involved in the deal. For most teams, Melo getting dealt means they get an opportunity to pick at the post-Melo roster Denver will have. The Nuggets have a few very attractive pieces that any contender would do well to add but if the Nuggets end up keeping Anthony – extension or not – Denver is not going to part with any of the complementary pieces in hopes of making a post-season run to keep the fanbase interested and to potentially coax Carmelo into staying. If the Nuggets do end up dealing Carmelo before the impending deadline, here are the most appealing Nuggets that other teams around the league should be in hot pursuit of. Hit the jump for the four most appealing Nuggets that Denver should look to deal after shipping Melo… After their owner publicly took his team out of the Carmelo Anthony rumor mill just a month ago, the New Jersey Nets are once again talking to the Denver Nuggets about acquiring the all-star small forward, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. It isn’t likely that the Nets are going to up their [...] The missing link in a potential deal involving Carmelo Anthony and the New York Knicks may be the each team’s respective point guards. The Nuggets are reportedly interested in obtaining Knicks’ point guard Raymond Felton in return for Carmelo, which is a wrinkle that hasn’t been previously discussed. The rumor was first reported by [...]
Just days after I floated the idea of the Lakers trading Andrew Bynum to the Denver Nuggets for Carmelo Anthony in my column about the Lakers’ trade possibilities, a Bynum-Melo rumor was actually reported by ESPN. The report states that the Nuggets and Lakers have had initial conversations regarding a swap that would revolve around Carmelo and Bynum but that no deal has been put into place at this moment. For all of those of you that think this deal would be beneficial for the Lakers, lets set things straight: Carmelo Anthony would be a horrible fit for the Lakers. First, lets take a look at what I said in my column about Bynum:
Digging in deeper to the numbers, Carmelo Anthony takes the most mid-range jumpers per game in the league (6.5 per contest) than any other player in the league, which means he is taking the worst shots possible more frequently than anyone else. Anthony takes almost all of those shots off the dribble, which is another problem. For a player like Dirk Nowizki, taking 6.1 16-23 foot shots per game isn’t a problem not only because he’s the best mid-range shooter perhaps ever, but also because 80% of his makes come off of an assist. Only 40% of Anthony’s long two point jumpers are the result of a pass, making his shot selection even more questionable. More on why Carmelo would be a bad fit for the Lakers after the break…
But while there may be much less of a chance that Carmelo ends up staying in Denver for the remainder of the season, it’s time to start looking at the Nuggets as they are currently constructed to determine whether or not this will just be a lost cause for both Anthony and the Nuggets if they end up sticking together until the end of the year. Denver is currently the sixth seed in the Western Conference with the same record as the Utah Jazz (30-22) but with a superior head-to-head record. This a team that beat the Heat by 28 earlier in the season (though they were without LeBron James, that’s still impressive) but also a club that got smashed by the Clippers and recently lost back-to-back games to the 76ers and Nets by the scores of 110-99 and 115-99. Whether the Anthony drama has this team disinterested or in spite of their teammate, there is clearly something missing from this team that it had over the past two seasons when they were legitimate contenders to take down the Lakers in the West thanks to their uptempo offense and reliable home court advantage. But instead, ever since Carmelo was left to fend for himself against Utah in the post-season last year, Anthony has started to slip away from his supporting cast and the mojo around this squad is clearly no longer there – at least not consistently. For my recap of last night’s Rockets-Nuggets game as well as every other game in the NBA last night, hit the break… |
     
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