Don’t rush to judge the Carmelo trade

The Knicks are 7-8 since acquiring Carmelo Anthony from Denver. (Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

It was a bad weekend for the Nuggets and Knicks. But it was much worse for New York, which thinks of itself as too talented to lose consecutive road games to the Pistons and Bucks, the latter of which included one of the worst first quarters you’ll see an NBA team play this season. Denver also dropped two road games, but competitive losses in the dreaded Orlando-Miami back-to-back are more an expected outcome than a sign of fundamental problems, even if both games exposed what good, quick defensive teams can do against an offense that no longer has a reliable go-to threat.

And, of course, Carmelo Anthony pouted. He sulked in Detroit when his teammates didn’t pass him the ball, even on possessions when the Knicks scored easily, according to Newsday‘s Alan Hahn. He looked uninterested in at least one team huddle, and his general frustrations led Amar’e Stoudemire to call for a renewed commitment to Mike D’Antoni’s fast-paced, pick-and-roll-heavy brand of offense. Stoudemire said certain unnamed players weren’t “buying into” D’Antoni’s system, a comment clearly aimed at Anthony even it exaggerates the degree to which the offense — scoring at crazy rates since the big trade — had bent to fit Carmelo’s skill set.

Anthony apologized for his fit of pique, but all of this already has folks wondering if the Knicks, just 7-8 since the deal, made a mistake in trading five players for Anthony, Chauncey Billups and spare parts. The fact that Denver has gone 9-4 since Anthony’s departure has obviously fueled some of this instant judgment, but it doesn’t make it any more ridiculous.

Look: The Anthony trade was not about this season, and what the Nuggets and Knicks do over the next six weeks is not meaningful in evaluating the deal. It’s nice that the Nuggets have thrived without Anthony, and the fact that they have done so after receiving three quality rotation players from the Knicks shouldn’t really be a surprise. But the future for Denver remains uncertain. Nene can opt out of his contract for next season, and if he does, the Nuggets will have to decide how to deal with five key free agents: Nene, J.R. Smith, Arron Afflalo, Kenyon Martin and Wilson Chandler.

Even if some of those decisions are pretty easy, the Nuggets will have to make choices. They already have about $30 million on the books for next season (not including Nene’s $11.6 million option), and there is considerable positional overlap in the the Smith/Afflalo and Chandler/Danilo Gallinari pairings. The Nuggets made the Anthony deal knowing that two key pieces (Chandler and Raymond Felton) were very likely not going to be part of their long-term vision. What’s happening now with the Nuggets is nice, but it has a bit of a fool’s-gold feel and should have little bearing on how anyone judges the trade. (It should have some bearing on how we judge Anthony, especially as a defender, but that’s a different story.)

The Knicks also made the deal assuming Chandler and Felton were not in their long-term plans, either. Remember: New York had about $43.5 million on the books for 2011-12 (not including some other small charges) before making the trade, and with the next salary cap so uncertain, the team could not comfortably bank on having the space to sign Anthony as a free agent. Had the Knicks gone that route, they almost certainly would have had to renounce their rights to Chandler, a restricted free agent this summer, and they may have lost him to a competing bidder regardless. And this doesn’t even factor in that Anthony himself wanted his new contract done now and not under the next collective bargaining agreement. A postseason sign-and-trade would have been incredibly difficult — borderline impossible, really — given the current rules, as Larry Coon explains here.

So the Knicks took their shot when they could, and as I’ve said before, they gave up precisely four long-term “assets”:

1) Gallinari. A big loss, for sure, but he’s not in Anthony’s league as a scorer, and New York rightly believed that a Stoudemire-Gallinari-Free Agent X nucleus might not have been good enough to compete with Miami and Chicago in the long run.

2) Timofey Mozgov. Eh. He’s almost 25, he can barely get off the bench in Denver and he has guaranteed money through 2013.

3) A 2014 first-rounder, two second-rounders, cash and the right for Denver to swap first-round picks with New York in 2016. There’s a decent chance none of these things end up mattering at all.

4) Ephemeral possibility. This is the all-inclusive umbrella for the possibility that the Gallinari/Chandler/Felton core might have matured into a dynamite team or an even more attractive pile of assets that could have nabbed a disgruntled superstar free-agent-to-be next season. The Knicks will try to lure exactly that sort of player in 2012, offering the combination of Amar’e and Carmelo as stars already under contract and salary books almost completely clean otherwise after next season.

That’s how you have to look at the Anthony trade, almost as a longer-term version of the Heat’s decision to pursue Chris Bosh so aggressively. Bosh is not, on his own, worth a max deal as the third-best player on a great team, but if his signing was among the important prerequisites for signing LeBron James, then it was a no-brainer. Anthony’s deal might work out the same way. I’m in the school that Anthony, so uninterested in half the game (defense), is not a max-level player, but if the presence of his scoring and his perceived superstardom persuades Chris Paul or Dwight Howard to come to New York, then the deal will have been a success for the Knicks.

We’ll have to wait and see. And that’s the point. Judging this trade by what happens this spring is silly.

10 THINGS I LIKE AND DON’T LIKE

1. The speed in Denver

Ty Lawson and the Nuggets have a new-look offense without Carmelo Anthony. (Sam Forencich/NBAE via Getty Images)

By “speed” I don’t really mean the Nuggets’ fast-breaking style, though that is fun to watch. The movement within their half-court offense now is so decisive and quick. Big guys are slipping screens and darting down to the hoop or to set another screen for a shooter in the corner; Nene is fantastic at cutting into the paint behind an initial cutter, catching the ball in open space and scoring; Ty Lawson and Chandler are setting quick screens for each other off the ball and forcing defenses to scramble and switch; the team is running a ton of high-speed pick-and-pops, with Nene sliding out to set a back screen on the defender rushing to catch the popping shooter; and there is lots of other fun stuff going on.

And it’s fast. Guys aren’t jogging to their spots, and players with the ball aren’t holding it for more than a beat before doing something. That’s how you score when you suddenly don’t have one go-to guy who can isolate his way to hoops, draw double teams and tilt an entire defense toward his side of the floor.

The best defenses will have systematic and smart ways for dealing with this stuff, which is part of the reason why Denver struggled over the weekend against Orlando and Miami. But if they keep at it, the Nuggets will be able to score on most nights.

2. Injuries

The last few days have been a brutal reminder that health is always among the top deciding factors in the championship race, no matter how much we all wish it weren’t so. Over the last week or so, the following players on possible playoff teams either suffered a new injury, reaggravated an old one or revealed the existence of an injury we didn’t know about: Kobe Bryant, Rajon Rondo, Andre Iguodala, Carlos Boozer, J.J. Redick, Gilbert Arenas, Arron Afflalo, Raymond Felton, Shawn Marion, Paul Millsap and Steve Nash. And I’m not even including Mike Miller, Chris Paul and Brandon Roy, three guys who are clearly not 100 percent. Bad times.

3. Teams wearing green on or around St. Patrick’s Day

I’m 25 percent Irish and generally enjoy the tradition of wearing green, but it just doesn’t work with the Raptors, Bulls, Knicks or any of the other teams that ditch their normal road colors and go green in the week of St. Patrick’s Day. It’s disorienting and sort of ugly — especially the combination of the green and orange in New York.

4. Indiana’s yellow roadies

I’m not a total pessimist on alternate jerseys. I’ve already expressed my affection for Milwaukee’s red road duds, and I really enjoy the yellow number Indiana wore at Boston last week. The Pacers need more yellow on their court, too.

5. Brendan Haywood, struggling in Dallas

The Mavericks have allowed about 104 points per 100 possessions with Tyson Chandler on the floor and about 107 with Brendan Haywood, and if you watched the ultra-fun Dallas-San Antonio game on Friday, you saw why. The Spurs attacked Haywood over and over on pick-and-rolls, and he just had no chance. He couldn’t keep guards from turning the corner, and he sometimes tried to make up for this by jumping out over the screen too aggressively and too early, leaving easy driving lanes. And when the Spurs ran pick-and-pop plays, he couldn’t come close to recovering in time to contest Tim Duncan’s 17-footers.

This is a problem because Chandler can be foul prone and Rick Carlisle hasn’t been comfortable giving Ian Mahinmi consistent minutes. All of the Mavs’ likely playoff opponents — Portland or Denver in the first round, and then the Lakers if Dallas advances — have dangerous big men.

6. Ryan Anderson’s versatility

In the Ryan Anderson vs. Brandon Bass debate that roils among Orlando fans, I find myself always on the Anderson side, even if the debate is a bit of a false one because both figure to get minutes. Anderson is typecast as a three-point shooter, but he has long been a good offensive rebounder skilled at slithering along the baseline to get inside position and generally fighting hard and smart to get the Magic an extra possession or two. He’s also become better at posting up smaller guys when a pick-and-roll draws a switch. He doesn’t have Bass’ athleticism, but to my eyes, he’s a better positional defender, less likely to jump at a pump fake or turn his head at a bad time.

7. Mike Conley’s hesitation dribble

The Memphis point guard has one of the best hesitation dribbles in the league. It’s one key reason why he is able to get in the lane even on pick-and-roll plays that the defense initially seems to have under control. Watch Conley turn the corner to his left, pause and then accelerate mid-dribble past a flat-footed defender. Great stuff.

8. Minnesota’s pick-and-roll defense

It’s hard to watch at this point, and, 70 games into the season, I may have to divorce myself from the Timberwolves the rest of the way — especially given their remaining schedule full of likely blowouts. If you run a high pick-and-roll against this team, you will get a good look almost every time. It’s not one person, either; its guards (Luke Ridnour and Jonny Flynn, and Wesley Johnson, too) can’t stay in front of people, and their bigs are a crucial foot or two out of position.

One small thing: Kevin Love will sometimes stay on the floor, arms at the level of his opponent’s chest, instead of jumping or raising his arms to contest interior shots. It’s a risk/reward thing: Playing this way allows Love to nail his box-out, but it also raises the likelihood that the initial shot will go in.

9. Rajon Rondo as the Road Runner

Rondo is struggling with his play and his health, but I’m not sure any player’s voice is more deeply tattooed in my brain. Whenever the Celtics grab a defensive board, you’ll hear Rondo shouting the name of the player with the ball, encouraging that player to pass so that Rondo can get Boston’s offense moving. Rondo uses initials (“K.G.” for Kevin Garnett, “P.P.” for Paul Pierce, if I’m hearing the latter right) and nicknames (“Baby!” for Glen Davis and “Perk!” for the recently departed Kendrick Perkins), and he often repeats his call twice, so that you hear, “Perk! Perk!” in rapid succession. The two-syllable nature of many of these calls, plus Rondo’s speed and his unique voice, all combine to remind me of the Road Runner’s “Meep-Meep” call from those classic Wile E. Coyote cartoons.

Boston’s offense is almost always better off when Rondo is pushing the ball, so I associate his voice now with some of the team’s best offense.

And, yes, I realize I have clearly thought too much about all of this.

10. Evan Turner’s cradle take

It has been an up-and-down rookie season for the Sixers’ Turner, but I love the way he cradles the ball like a running back when he picks up his dribble on drives to the hoop. It’s a one-handed cradle (always right-handed, it seems), with Turner’s arm almost under the ball. I have no idea if it accomplishes anything. But individual style is always cool, and this is a small, unique thing in Turner’s game.