Report: Carmelo Anthony done in OKC, three teams in pursuit
For one of the worst players in the NBA by advanced stats, Carmelo Anthony is sure drawing a lot of attention in free agency.
According to a variety of rumors from the NBA media’s heavyweight reporters, three different teams are actively pursuing Anthony’s services now that Oklahoma City seems content to waive Anthony rather than pay him his $27.9 million salary in 2018-19.
The Thunder, using the league’s stretch provision, are going to stretch that cap hit over three years and save themselves something on the order of $107 million in salary and luxury tax in 2018-19.
This leaves Melo open to pursue his options.
Marc Stein of The New York Times said Friday that the Rockets are in contention for Anthony’s services.
The Houston Rockets are among the teams that will have interest in Carmelo Anthony once he secures his free agency, according to league sources
— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) July 6, 2018
Meanwhile, Adrian Wojnarowski and Royce Young of ESPN are saying that the Heat and Lakers might be the lucky “winners” of the Carmelo Anthony Sweepstakes.
Each team will be bidding for the services of a washed-up big name who opted into that mega-contract precisely because he knew full well that no team on the open market would pay him even a fifth of that — his value is closer to the $5.3 million mid-level exception DeMarcus Cousins took with Golden State.
Why? I’m glad you asked, person I made up to drive the narrative forward.
Anthony averaged 16.2 points, 5.8 rebounds and 1.3 assists last season; his scoring and assist numbers were by a mile the worst of his career.
He had a 12.7 player efficiency rating, again by far his worst and below the league average of 15.
And he had a minus-1.1 value over replacement player, third-worst in the league ahead of only De’Aaron Fox and Tyler Ulis, who are 20 and 22 years old and coming off their first and second seasons in the league where they played extended minutes on atrocious teams in Sacramento and Phoenix.
Anthony was the only guy who put up numbers that bad in extended minutes on a team that could plausibly have benched him. Only Andrew Wiggins and Harrison Barnes played more minutes than Melo did with negative VORP numbers, and only Wiggins did so on a playoff team.
Yet here we are, with teams willing to take out Oklahoma City’s trash for them.
Woj and Young pointed out that the “massive financial implications of Anthony opting into his $27.9 million contract for the 2018-19 season — coupled with a mutual understanding that his scaled-back role with the Thunder isn’t what he had signed up for — have dictated that the two sides will part ways sometime this summer.”
They also reported that OKC will get $107 million in salary-and-tax savings due to the NBA’s escalating penalties for “repeat taxpayers” that go into the league’s revenue sharing pool for smaller-market teams, ironically a pool from which the Thunder normally would need to draw in order to be profitable.
In other words, Anthony was signed to one of the worst contracts in the entire history of the league.
While Melo considered signing with the Rockets last year before finally ending up on the Thunder, it’s hard to imagine him being a fit in Houston’s three-point motion offense.
Anthony’s game is as an isolation player using one-on-one moves to create his own shot, and when Golden State forced Houston to do that in the Western Conference Finals last season, the pinnacle of the Warriors’ defensive mastery of the Rockets culminated in Houston missing 27 3-pointers in a row during Game 7 and ultimately losing the game and the series.
The only thing Melo buys the Rockets is another humiliation at the hands of their nemesis in Oakland.
Anthony would be a massive albatross in Los Angeles as well.
The idea that he and LeBron James could peacefully coexist on a basketball court, to say nothing about how far it would set back the development of young players like Kyle Kuzma and Brandon Ingram, who are the Lakers’ players of the future at the same spot Melo would be trying to get minutes, is so laughable as to be absurd.
Miami is an intriguing possibility — their roster is Hassan Whiteside, Goran Dragic, the fossil of Dwyane Wade and a bunch of guys you’ve never heard of if you’re not a Heat fan — but does anyone seriously believe that a washed-up, 34-year-old player who has been past the first round of the playoffs just twice in a 15-year career is the answer?
Melo couldn’t get good looks at the basket playing with Russell Westbrook and Paul George. He’s not getting good looks in Miami.
If you’re a Rockets, Heat or Lakers fan, you should be gathering a few friends, writing up some picket signs that say “Don’t Sign Melo” and making plans to spend an afternoon outside your team’s offices.
And bring some water; it gets hot in Los Angeles, Houston and Miami this time of year.
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