He was surrounded by reporters Tuesday in Washington, moments after the New York Knicks had concluded their morning shoot-around.
That’s when Carmelo Anthony rose up and really connected from deep, his effort tickling the twine inside my ticker.
“Every day is a new team and, ‘Melo said this, Melo said that,’” Melo said both this and that. “Melo hasn’t said anything yet. That’s what I will say: Melo hasn’t said anything.”
How many different ways do I love this statement?
1) Anthony is quoting someone else’s unnamed sources referring to himself in the third person.
2) Anthony is paraphrasing himself referring to himself in the third person.
3) Anthony is saying he hasn’t said anything and then, for added emphasis, reaffirming that the only thing he will say now is that he hadn’t said a thing then.
If you’re like me, you’re wondering when the official history of the NBA began to be documented by Dr. Seuss.
You’re also hoping so, so very much that another Doc, this one being Rivers, finds a way to trade for Anthony.
This is a player who absolutely belongs in Hollywood, right down to the fact Anthony is married to an actress and television personality who answers to the name La La.
If two decades of Kobe Bryant taught us anything, it’s that there can not be enough drama in the NBA, a league that today has LeBron James publicly feuding with Charles Barkley and Stephen Jackson admitting he smoked weed before games.
Say what you want about those two stories, but I’m sure you’re more familiar with them than you are with the Pelicans-Raptors final score from Tuesday night.
From a basketball standpoint, I don’t believe Anthony alone would make the Clippers better than the Golden State Warriors.
But, from a basketball standpoint, I’m certain the Clippers right now aren’t better than the Warriors, either. And, frankly, they aren’t particularly close.
For years, I’ve written about this team still being one player short of having a championship-contending roster. Anthony could be that one player.
The Clippers have tried to sell us on Chris Paul, Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan being a legitimate Big Three. I’m among the people who never have been willing to buy that claim.
Now, Rivers evidently has a chance to add Anthony without breaking up Paul, Griffin and Jordan, Cratosslot and, after several days of contemplating the prospect, I still haven’t come up with one definitive reason not to make such a trade. At least from the Clippers perspective.
Of course, it’s always easy to reach these conclusions when you are completely free of any actual responsibility. If running a professional sports team were that easy, Jim Buss would do it.
It’s also easy to dismiss how much losing players like Austin Rivers and Jamal Crawford would gut the Clippers bench. I’m not convinced more Alan Anderson would be any team’s solution.
Then, there’s the Knicks’ side of the equation. This is a franchise that has lost enough already without now losing a one-sided trade of its best player. New York surely is asking for high draft picks in any deal for Anthony, high draft picks being another thing the Clippers lack.
Let’s, however, keep this as real as we can or at least as real as the clock that’s ticking on this Clippers’ core.
The addition of Anthony would give the team the reminder of this season to figure out if, with this revised lineup, chasing down the Warriors anytime soon is a genuine possibility.
Paul and Griffin are signed through 2017-18, though both can opt out after this season. If Paul plays out his current contract, he’ll be 33 and, more significantly, 13 years into his career.
So, no matter what happens before the upcoming trade deadline – and that includes nothing happening – the Clippers are approaching a crossroads.
Rivers has an opportunity to vastly improve the offensive potential of his team at a time when NBA scores – thanks a great deal to Golden State – are trending upward.
He has a chance to surround Paul with the most talent the point guard ever has had, Paul forever marked as someone who’s plenty gifted but just hasn’t had enough help.
He has an opening to move a step closer to the Warriors, a team that seems to keep improving with each stride.
And Rivers has all this in front of him, if the reports are accurate, at a stunningly reasonable price.
Personally, I’ve never been a big fan of Anthony, in part because his teams have won only three playoff series. That’s ever, and, after 13 seasons, rather incredible.
But given the state of the Clippers in relation to the rest of the Western Conference, this is a trade I’d make.
That means, of course, it has absolutely no chance of happening, these local teams somehow managing to function without my advice.
By the way, just to make us all feel a little wiser today, the Raptors beat the Pelicans on Tuesday, 108-106, in overtime.
Contact the writer: jmiller@scng.com
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