OPINION: Maybe the Knicks should reconsider trading Carmelo Anthony

With the Carmelo Anthony trade talks on pause at the moment, it may be best that things stay that way.

Carmelo Anthony has been a New York Knick for 7 seasons now, with just 3 of those resulting in advancing to the playoffs. Now after all these years of continuing to be one of the best scorers in the league and being publicly roasted by ex Team President Phil Jackson, Carmelo is now the center piece of trade talks with the Houston Rockets. There were even talks about buying Carmelo out if the trade talks do not work out. Both of these options may not be the right thing to do just yet though.

Despite the fact that he has slowed down a little bit, he is still an elite scorer and one of the best isolation scorers in the league as well. The problem the Knicks have with Carmelo is the fact that he still has 2 years worth $54 million left on his contract that Jackson gave him when he first started his tenure in New York. Another problem is because of who else but Jackson when he went to the media first talking about how Carmelo holds the ball in his hands for too long which may be true but that is something that should be discussed behind closed doors. Then All Star break comes around and the Carmelo trade talks have begun and the Knicks record keeps riding south of .500. Jackson states to the media that he is someone who the Knicks do not want to have and that Carmelo should go to a winning team. That is like a used car salesman saying that his 2000 Cadillac requires a lot of maintenance and the brake pads need to be constantly fixed but then telling a customer this car would work better for them rather than the salesman. Nobody could have possibly seen one of the greatest basketball minds the league has ever seen actually driving down the value of one of the greatest scorers in the league for over ten years. Unfortunately for Knicks fans, that is what happened and now the Knicks are having a hard time finding suitors for any kind of deal. This may actually be a good thing for the upcoming season.

Carmelo still is a serviceable player who can be beneficial with his scoring abilities. Now that the Knicks are not running the triangle offense. This could be a major bounce back year for the Knicks and for Carmelo more specifically. Yes Jeff Hornacek’s offense which he has full control of for the upcoming season is made more for athletic runners which is the direction that the Knicks as an organization is heading towards. Although Carmelo is not as athletic as he used to be with his speed and jumping ability have been diminishing over the years, he still has the strength to be a serviceable rebounder which is a category he has been underrated in his whole career. This is also still a guy who can even while having a down year last year still averaged 23 points a game so like I already said there’s no need to question his scoring ability. Another important thing to remember is that he has been a mentor ot Kristaps Porzingis who is the obvious choice for the Knicks to build around for years to come. Porzingis has openly said that he has greatly benefited with Carmelo on the floor and that he has learned a great deal from him since joining the team. The benefit of having both these scoring threats will be tremendous as it has been and if the Knicks can build a reliable team defense around the two, then they should improve greatly. This year in the Eastern conference, star like Jimmy Butler, Paul George, and Paul Millsap have left their teams leaving the conference more open for the taking as a whole. Carmelo is someone who can help bring the team to a playoff spot if they can run Hornacek’s system successfully like in Phoenix in the 2013-2014 season in a stacked Western Conference. This is the system that almost won him the coach of the year so why not see Carmelo play a full year under this system before shipping him off without giving him a chance to operate in Hornacek’s system. Whether you like Carmelo or not, he has contributed an astounding amount of elite level play for the franchise for the seven seasons he spent in a Knicks’s jersey.