Knicks inch closer to landing ‘Melo

The Knicks are reportedly in talks for a three-team deal that would bring Carmelo Anthony to New York. (Garrett W. Ellwood/NBAE via Getty Images)

We’re just a bit more than two weeks from the trade deadline, so we’re going to hear reports now on just about every incremental step toward any significant trade. Reports will sometimes contradict each other in subtle or obvious ways, but that reflects more the minute-by-minute, evolving landscape of any deal — and perhaps the agendas the of anonymous sources involved — more than any larger inaccuracy in the reporting. In general, the plugged-in reporters will paint the big picture correctly.

And that big picture, right now, suggests that the Knicks and Nuggets are talking a bit more seriously, and that they are at least discussing a three-way trade that would bring Carmelo Anthony to New York and involve the Timberwolves as salary-cap facilitators.

The skeleton of the deal, first reported by ESPN.com, would send Anthony to the Knicks. In exchange, the Knicks would send Wilson Chandler, set to be a restricted free agent, to Denver. New York, needing to send out much more salary to absorb Anthony”s $17.1 million deal, would flip Eddy Curry’s expiring contract and Anthony Randolph to the Wolves. Minnesota would then send Corey Brewer — also set to be a restricted free agent — and a first-round pick to the Nuggets.

The total haul for Denver in this scenario would be Chandler, Brewer and a first-round pick, the specifics of which are unknown now. Underwhelming, for sure, but this all comes with the proper caveats: ESPN reported that Denver is “weighing other options,” one of which might be keeping Anthony with the hope that the new collective bargaining agreement would carry some NFL-style “franchise player” provision the Nuggets could use on the All-Star forward. And multiple sources — including a team executive — told SI.com’s Chris Mannix that this reported deal wasn’t close. Plus, ESPN reported other players could enter the deal. Newsday‘s Alan Hahn has a “source involved in the negotiations” who seemed to have been caught off guard by the ESPN report. (In a priceless little detail, Hahn also seemed to have made New York personnel boss Donnie Walsh a bit cranky by leaving a ‘Melo-related voicemail for Walsh at midnight.)

In other words: We know everything and nothing, again.

Let me be clear on this: If you can get Anthony for Chandler, Curry’s expiring contract and a player who has spent most of this season rotting on your bench, you do it. You do it even though combining Carmelo’s deal with Amar’e Stoudemire’s would limit New York’s ability to be a player on the 2012 free-agent market (set to include Chris Paul, Dwight Howard and Deron Williams) without some sign-and-trade help. You do it even if Chandler, just 23, looks to be developing into one of those versatile, hard-working guys every championship team needs, and even if Randolph pulls off something drool-worthy every 20 games or so.

This is Carmelo Anthony. We’ve picked apart his uninspired defense (and, man, can it be uninspired) and the fact that he scores inefficiently compared to some of the league’s other marquee guys. He ranks “only” in the mid-30s in Player Efficiency Rating, he takes too many threes and his late-game heroics make people forget about all the possessions in middle of the game he wastes with jab step-jab step-jab step-20-foot jumper sequences.

But this is still Carmelo Anthony, 26 years old and a game-changing scorer who’s perhaps better suited than any player in the league to take the ball in an isolation with 10 seconds left and win you a game. He gets to the line at an elite level, he’s one of the best rebounding small forwards in the league when he’s motivated and he has proved this year that he can serve as a small-ball power forward — something that would seem to fit well in New York.

And fit is important. For all the talent Anthony’s post-Allen Iverson Denver teams have had, none of them have featured a half-court scorer on Carmelo’s level. Chauncey Billups is a distributor with a nice three-point shot and a post-up threat against a few small guards. Nene is a wonderful player, but his ability to create for himself comes and goes. J.R. Smith remains maddening.

Some of that might be on Anthony, because you wonder how much a guy like Nene might be able to do if Denver consistently ran its best motion-oriented sets.

Still, Stoudemire is obviously a different monster, and you’d like to think that his presence as a pick-and-roll finisher and isolation threat — plus the general speed of Mike D’Antoni’s offense — would force Anthony to break his worst habits. And that Carmelo — a more efficient Carmelo with someone he perceives as his equal — is something Chandler is never going to be, and someone you make this deal for in a second.

As for the Nuggets, any deal like this clearly will be a disappointment from a basketball perspective, particularly after they reportedly got close to a deal that would have brought them Derrick Favors and multiple first-round draft picks. We’ll never know how real that proposed trade really was — not without Carmelo’s firm guarantee that he would sign an extension in New Jersey.

Chandler is nice building block, provided Denver could re-sign him at a decent price. Brewer is a solid (if perhaps a bit overrated) defender who won’t help you on offense. He might not be worth the $4.9 million qualifying offer his team would have to tender to retain matching rights this summer. And it’s impossible to judge the value of the Minnesota first-rounder without knowing the details; the Wolves have already dealt their 2011 first-rounder to the Clippers, but they own first-rounders from both the Jazz and the Grizzlies with varying protections.

The deal also represents massive savings this year for Denver. Even if it is limited to only the names reported in the ESPN.com story, the deal would save Denver about $11.3 million in salary for this season — and you can double that because the Nuggets are over the luxury-tax threshold. The specific proposal in question here wouldn’t take the Nuggets under the tax line, but they could get under it — and thus qualify for a payout reserved for teams under the tax — if they can add about $3 million in salary to the outgoing part of the deal. This stuff matters.

Not a great haul for Denver, but it’s better than nothing. And “nothing” is what you’d get if you refuse to trade Anthony out of spite or hold on to him, hoping the new collective bargaining agreement includes some franchise-tag provision that would allow Denver to keep him.