Knicks · So we are okay with trading Melo for Love or JJ F...N Redick? (page 4)

smackeddog wrote:Man, there's talk now of the Clips not even wanting to part with Redick- we'd be left with Crawford (who we might need to package with a second rounder to get rid of him, according to one article), Wes and Rivers- Weep! Talk about rock bottom!

He should wait and revisit things at the deadline or around the draft.

dacash wrote:

HofstraBBall wrote:

TripleThreat wrote:

HofstraBBall wrote:This makes no sense to me. So this makes our future better how?

Addition by subtraction.

No leverage

Accepting it's time to start over

Melo is only moving for pennies on the dollar. The Knicks don't have any trade leverage. The best they can hope for is some kind of asset that makes the trade palatable to try to ease the minds of the NY fanbase ( other non NY GMs and teams are going to recognize this, NY won't trade if it will get it's front office totally roasted more than it will be already) But nothing barely more than some kind of consolation over a salary dump/dead roster filler/bad contract platter of "Meh"

The Knicks are not getting Kevin Love. They are not getting Blake Griffin. They are not getting Jae Crowder.

They are getting roster churn, maybe some contract relief for the future, mixed in with a bad contract, and likely some super protected picks.

I said it years ago, the BEST time to trade Melo was when Lin was here. I then said trade him before he hits FA and this was before the NTC contract. I kept saying trade him over the years. And now its pennies to the dollar. The Knicks would have gotten more if they simply moved on from him earlier and accepted he could not help them win period. He just doesn't make his team mates better and he doesn't play real team basketball and he has not truly developed his game at all.

Addition? Crawford 14M 3 years left and 36 years old? Rivers 12M? Bench player. Redick 7M and FA at end of year?
No Leverage? Taht was my point for not trading him? But you think its a point for?
Accepting its time to start over? My point that its Phil's third try. Did you read my post?

You say its a good time to trade him but go on to give reasons why its not? And trading him when Lin was here? So we would have build around who exactly? Wonder boy Lin? Is he still in the league? And your point makes no sense. As we won 54 games a year later. SMDH

Trade him because we can get several picks makes sense. Trading/benching some of the obvious problems and playing our young guys makes more sense. Trading him for crap makes no sense. Unless you just hate the guy. Would respect people more if they just came out and said it.

exactly, why trade him for bad contracts and a might be good end of bench players? trade rose and lee and oquinn and jennings get draft picks late and second round picks. think atl wouldnt want rose for like shebalosfa and their second round draft pick? lee and or jennings cant get us late or second round picks in such a deep draft with clarence " pick a winner" gaines at the helm we could get some nice finds.

I have to go with TrippleThreat on this one ..
Melo are a great person off the court, as a player Melo is a outstanding isolation scorer in need of two strong leadership teammates to have a successful season on a team.
Melo were becoming a cancer to his teammates on the Denver Nuggets, to where all his teammates started following Billups n Kenyon Martin leadership.
Whomever disapproved the Melo-trade on 2011 deadline, and disapproved of the $124M contract for the reason of Melo trade value would only drop lower in his career by staying a individual-scorer (same as Marbury) and never try to improve his weak effort n talent on the defensive-end (Vince Carter n Andre Iguodala improve their defensive effort by 90% to stay in the NBA for top dollar) .. knows NBA B.ball.

It does not matter who or what u get for Melo in a trade .. Melo full control over the Knicks offense for 35 minute a night have to stop .. especially Melo's 6 year consistent poor performance in the 4th quarter of Knick games.

HofstraBBall wrote:
Addition? Crawford 14M 3 years left and 36 years old? Rivers 12M? Bench player. Redick 7M and FA at end of year?
No Leverage? Taht was my point for not trading him? But you think its a point for?
Accepting its time to start over? My point that its Phil's third try. Did you read my post?

http://www.clipsnation.com/2017/1/21/14344586/nba-trade-rumors-carmelo-anthony-clippers-knicks-bonus-jamal-crawford-austin-rivers

I’ve been asked a few times about Carmelo Anthony’s trade kicker this week. A lot of my first article is based around the idea that the Clippers don’t just have to take back Carmelo’s $24.5 million salary, but rather roughly $29.5 million as a result of Melo’s trade bonus. Here are the basics:

First of all, Anthony has a trade kicker worth 15% of his remaining contract. For 41 more games this year and 82 games each of the next two years, Anthony is scheduled to make $66,451,590. 15% of that salary is $9,967,739, and because the final year of Anthony’s deal is following an early termination option, that bonus must be split between the two guaranteed years of his contract. That extra $4,983,869 this year moves his salary up to $29,543,249. In order to match that salary, they’d have to send out about $23,554,600.

That one isn’t too rough—what’s rougher is the Clippers’ hard cap situation:

The Clippers are hard-capped at $117,287,000 because they used their full non-taxpayer mid-level exception this summer to sign Wesley Johnson. They currently have $2,546,968 in wiggle room underneath that hard cap. That means, essentially, that for any trade to be legal, the following must be true:

(incoming salary) - (outgoing salary) </= $2,546,968

By that formula, the Clippers must send out at least $26,996,281 in salary. It’s important to note that this is the far, far low end of the spectrum for outgoing salary: this places the Clippers at 100% of their hard cap allowance, without any room to sign players into their open roster spots. Depending on the deal, it’s likely that the Clippers will need at least some wiggle room for buyout additions.

So, pretty straightforward. Here’s what gets tricky: players are allowed to waive their trade bonuses under certain situations. It doesn’t really apply here, which is why I chose not to include it in the original article, but I want to talk about it now for two reasons: to clear up the most common question I’m getting on Melo trade math, and to raise an interesting asset management idea I reached following discussions on Melo’s trade kicker on twitter.

Let’s look at how the basic version of the trade goes down:

First, send Wesley Johnson anywhere, for nothing, into a team’s cap room or a TPE. This creates a 5.6M TPE for LAC, and gives them roughly 8.2M in room under the hard cap. Now, they can move Jamal Crawford and Austin Rivers for Anthony and have the space to take back Carmelo’s salary without matching it dollar-for-dollar. Still, Rivers and Crawford make a combined $24.25M—125% of that is over 30 million, which means Carmelo wouldn’t be able to waive part of that trade kicker.

The outcome of this deal is the same as that of the Rivers/Crawford/Johnson for Anthony swap I outlined before—even in a direct trade with the Knicks, they’d set the deal up so that a TPE would be created for Wesley Johnson’s 5.6M salary.

So, we tried something, but it didn’t let Melo waive his bonus, so his salary is still giant, and it didn’t save the Clippers from sending out anything extra.

Let’s switch some stuff around and build something that makes him waive his bonus:

If the Clippers send Austin, Jamal, Wesley, and Alan Anderson to the Knicks, they can create an even bigger TPE and force Melo to decline his bonus. From New York’s perspective, this is simply one trade—Anthony goes out (24.5M) and Rivers, Crawford, Johnson, and Anderson come back (30.8M), which is a legal trade. From the Clippers’ perspective, it works as two trades:

Rivers (11M) goes to the Knicks for nothing, creating an 11M TPE, and

Crawford, Johnson, and Anderson (19.8M) go to the Knicks for Anthony (24.5M), which is a legal trade

Since the Clippers would be sending out $19,861,443 in salary in the Anthony trade, the max that they’d be able to bring back would be $24,926,804—that gives Carmelo only about $500,000 of his trade bonus, forcing him to waive the rest for the trade to go through. It actually increases the Clippers’ wiggle room under the hard cap, since they’re sending out more salary than they’re taking back, and it takes LAC out of taxpayer territory by a few million. Then, next season when they likely won’t be restricted by the hard cap, they’ll have that $11 million Rivers TPE to work with—we’ve seen how valuable those big exceptions have been for Cleveland in adding role players for nothing.

Just for fun, here’s an even crazier idea that could never happen:

Send Wesley, Jamal, Paul Pierce, and Anderson all out for Carmelo Anthony. This trade is the only way I can conceive to legally land Anthony on the Clippers and retain Austin Rivers for the bench. Paul Pierce serves the same function as Austin Rivers above—he goes out for a TPE to create enough room for the Clippers to fit Melo under the hard cap, while the same Crawford/Johnson/Anderson package is actually swapped for Melo. The Clippers’ total outgoing salary in this deal is $22.9 million, and Melo’s incoming salary is the same as above—$24.9. The Clippers’ 2.6 million of wiggle room under the hard cap shrinks to $600,000, but it’s all legal, and the Clippers keep Austin. They’d have to use that last shred of flexibility to sign a player (they’d only have 12, and teams are required to carry 13), and the Knicks would have to cut three guys (presumably, Anderson, Pierce, and one of their own benchwarmers).

The problem, of course, is that there’s no trade value in that Clippers package—this is definitely a scenario where they’d have to work with Toronto and Boston to remove protections, freeing up two future first-round picks to go to the Knicks in 2021 and 2023.

There you have it—two scenarios where the trade can be manipulated so that Melo is able to waive his no-trade clause. The first is obviously more practical—the Knicks are getting the same package based around Austin Rivers, but some cap gymnastics force Anthony to waive his bonus, lowering the incoming salary for the Clippers and helping them dodge the tax and have enough wiggle room to fill out the roster with buyout guys. The second one is a much more bare-bones approach—the trade is legal but the Knicks are getting nothing of value (except for draft considerations) and the Clippers would be walking the hard cap tight rope. Is it worth it, should the Knicks be willing? Of course. Would the Knicks be willing? Of course not.

If the Clippers are interested in the Melo sweepstakes, they’re playing the waiting game right now. Anthony says he wants to stay, but that he’ll waive his no-trade clause if the Knicks decide to blow up the team and rebuild—beyond that, rumors have been all over the place, and often conflicting. If Anthony decides to pull the trigger by saying he’d waive his no-trade clause, things could start moving very quickly. Until then, nothing is possible.

******

Yes, I've read your posts and they make no practical sense in how the NBA actually operates.

If the Knicks could trade Melo to anyone, then they'd have some leverage

If the Knicks could trade Melo and his contract wasn't such a massive cap hit, then they'd have some leverage

If the Knicks were not in a situation where Melo can simply say "I want this team and this team only, and I'm not going if Players X , Y and Z are gone" then they'd have some leverage.

The Knicks have ZERO LEVERAGE. They have the trade deadline, which forces teams to consider getting Melo there sooner than later to get the team to gel, and this might the Clips last chance with Chris Paul, that's operates as INCENTIVE, but it's not true LEVERAGE.

Why take Crawford? Who says Crawford is a good idea in the first place if the team had a choice. THIS TEAM HAS NO CHOICE. Melo doesn't want to be here. Jackson doesn't want him here. Do you want a sulking even more anti-team Melo to poison the next two years of Zinger's career? To absorb the kind of cap hit that any incoming team would need to take, and since the NTC limits what the incoming team has to give, the Knicks are almost certainly going to HAVE TO TAKE AT LEAST ONE BAD CONTRACT BACK.

I am not calling Crawford an effective player anymore or a good contract, I am saying he's not going to lock in and poison Zinger for sure the next two years. Also his cap hit is smaller, which makes it easier to possibly move in the future. It's unlikely, but at least Crawford can be moved to ANY TEAM and there are more salary matches that fit for him. Rivers is young. I don't think he's a good fit or a good contract either, but guess what? The Clippers only have X number of players can move and make the salary constraints work that aren't part of the core Melo would accept to go to in order to waive the NTC.

You keep saying, that's a horrible package, that's not good enough. Well "NOT GOOD ENOUGH" is what you get when you trade a player for pennies on the dollar. The Knicks franchise is like some out of towner in the wrong NY street late at night, Melo is the guy mugging him with the giant hand cannon in his face. That's what the NTC does, it is weapon the player can leverage to use against the franchise. You seem to think the Knicks are also as well armed in this situation. They are not.

Melo can be traded NOW for 15 cents on the dollar. He can be traded at the deadline for 10 cents on the dollar. He can be traded in the offseason for 5 cents on the dollar. The longer the Knicks wait, the uglier it gets. It doesn't go from good to ugly, it goes from ugly to uglier.

This is not a trade to get assets and a player bounty. This is a player and contract dump. You act like it's the former when the reality is it is the later. I cannot force you to face the reality, just like no one could force you to face the reality for years that Melo was never going to help the Knicks win playoff games and contend.

^^^Great article. I disagree with most of your post but enjoyed the article.

Kemet wrote:

dacash wrote:

HofstraBBall wrote:

TripleThreat wrote:

HofstraBBall wrote:This makes no sense to me. So this makes our future better how?

Addition by subtraction.

No leverage

Accepting it's time to start over

Melo is only moving for pennies on the dollar. The Knicks don't have any trade leverage. The best they can hope for is some kind of asset that makes the trade palatable to try to ease the minds of the NY fanbase ( other non NY GMs and teams are going to recognize this, NY won't trade if it will get it's front office totally roasted more than it will be already) But nothing barely more than some kind of consolation over a salary dump/dead roster filler/bad contract platter of "Meh"

The Knicks are not getting Kevin Love. They are not getting Blake Griffin. They are not getting Jae Crowder.

They are getting roster churn, maybe some contract relief for the future, mixed in with a bad contract, and likely some super protected picks.

I said it years ago, the BEST time to trade Melo was when Lin was here. I then said trade him before he hits FA and this was before the NTC contract. I kept saying trade him over the years. And now its pennies to the dollar. The Knicks would have gotten more if they simply moved on from him earlier and accepted he could not help them win period. He just doesn't make his team mates better and he doesn't play real team basketball and he has not truly developed his game at all.

Addition? Crawford 14M 3 years left and 36 years old? Rivers 12M? Bench player. Redick 7M and FA at end of year?
No Leverage? Taht was my point for not trading him? But you think its a point for?
Accepting its time to start over? My point that its Phil's third try. Did you read my post?

You say its a good time to trade him but go on to give reasons why its not? And trading him when Lin was here? So we would have build around who exactly? Wonder boy Lin? Is he still in the league? And your point makes no sense. As we won 54 games a year later. SMDH

Trade him because we can get several picks makes sense. Trading/benching some of the obvious problems and playing our young guys makes more sense. Trading him for crap makes no sense. Unless you just hate the guy. Would respect people more if they just came out and said it.

exactly, why trade him for bad contracts and a might be good end of bench players? trade rose and lee and oquinn and jennings get draft picks late and second round picks. think atl wouldnt want rose for like shebalosfa and their second round draft pick? lee and or jennings cant get us late or second round picks in such a deep draft with clarence " pick a winner" gaines at the helm we could get some nice finds.

I have to go with TrippleThreat on this one ..
Melo are a great person off the court, as a player Melo is a outstanding isolation scorer in need of two strong leadership teammates to have a successful season on a team.
Melo were becoming a cancer to his teammates on the Denver Nuggets, to where all his teammates started following Billups n Kenyon Martin leadership.
Whomever disapproved the Melo-trade on 2011 deadline, and disapproved of the $124M contract for the reason of Melo trade value would only drop lower in his career by staying a individual-scorer (same as Marbury) and never try to improve his weak effort n talent on the defensive-end (Vince Carter n Andre Iguodala improve their defensive effort by 90% to stay in the NBA for top dollar) .. knows NBA B.ball.

It does not matter who or what u get for Melo in a trade .. Melo full control over the Knicks offense for 35 minute a night have to stop .. especially Melo's 6 year consistent poor performance in the 4th quarter of Knick games.

Dont know if you realized this was not a thread for you to post your ongoing "I hate Melo" points, Yawn. It was to say that for the best interest of the Knicks, trading Melo just to make the haters happy, is foolish. Funny how you post anytime Lin is mentioned.

TripleThreat wrote:

HofstraBBall wrote:
Addition? Crawford 14M 3 years left and 36 years old? Rivers 12M? Bench player. Redick 7M and FA at end of year?
No Leverage? Taht was my point for not trading him? But you think its a point for?
Accepting its time to start over? My point that its Phil's third try. Did you read my post?

http://www.clipsnation.com/2017/1/21/14344586/nba-trade-rumors-carmelo-anthony-clippers-knicks-bonus-jamal-crawford-austin-rivers

I’ve been asked a few times about Carmelo Anthony’s trade kicker this week. A lot of my first article is based around the idea that the Clippers don’t just have to take back Carmelo’s $24.5 million salary, but rather roughly $29.5 million as a result of Melo’s trade bonus. Here are the basics:

First of all, Anthony has a trade kicker worth 15% of his remaining contract. For 41 more games this year and 82 games each of the next two years, Anthony is scheduled to make $66,451,590. 15% of that salary is $9,967,739, and because the final year of Anthony’s deal is following an early termination option, that bonus must be split between the two guaranteed years of his contract. That extra $4,983,869 this year moves his salary up to $29,543,249. In order to match that salary, they’d have to send out about $23,554,600.

That one isn’t too rough—what’s rougher is the Clippers’ hard cap situation:

The Clippers are hard-capped at $117,287,000 because they used their full non-taxpayer mid-level exception this summer to sign Wesley Johnson. They currently have $2,546,968 in wiggle room underneath that hard cap. That means, essentially, that for any trade to be legal, the following must be true:

(incoming salary) - (outgoing salary) </= $2,546,968

By that formula, the Clippers must send out at least $26,996,281 in salary. It’s important to note that this is the far, far low end of the spectrum for outgoing salary: this places the Clippers at 100% of their hard cap allowance, without any room to sign players into their open roster spots. Depending on the deal, it’s likely that the Clippers will need at least some wiggle room for buyout additions.

So, pretty straightforward. Here’s what gets tricky: players are allowed to waive their trade bonuses under certain situations. It doesn’t really apply here, which is why I chose not to include it in the original article, but I want to talk about it now for two reasons: to clear up the most common question I’m getting on Melo trade math, and to raise an interesting asset management idea I reached following discussions on Melo’s trade kicker on twitter.

Let’s look at how the basic version of the trade goes down:

First, send Wesley Johnson anywhere, for nothing, into a team’s cap room or a TPE. This creates a 5.6M TPE for LAC, and gives them roughly 8.2M in room under the hard cap. Now, they can move Jamal Crawford and Austin Rivers for Anthony and have the space to take back Carmelo’s salary without matching it dollar-for-dollar. Still, Rivers and Crawford make a combined $24.25M—125% of that is over 30 million, which means Carmelo wouldn’t be able to waive part of that trade kicker.

The outcome of this deal is the same as that of the Rivers/Crawford/Johnson for Anthony swap I outlined before—even in a direct trade with the Knicks, they’d set the deal up so that a TPE would be created for Wesley Johnson’s 5.6M salary.

So, we tried something, but it didn’t let Melo waive his bonus, so his salary is still giant, and it didn’t save the Clippers from sending out anything extra.

Let’s switch some stuff around and build something that makes him waive his bonus:

If the Clippers send Austin, Jamal, Wesley, and Alan Anderson to the Knicks, they can create an even bigger TPE and force Melo to decline his bonus. From New York’s perspective, this is simply one trade—Anthony goes out (24.5M) and Rivers, Crawford, Johnson, and Anderson come back (30.8M), which is a legal trade. From the Clippers’ perspective, it works as two trades:

Rivers (11M) goes to the Knicks for nothing, creating an 11M TPE, and

Crawford, Johnson, and Anderson (19.8M) go to the Knicks for Anthony (24.5M), which is a legal trade

Since the Clippers would be sending out $19,861,443 in salary in the Anthony trade, the max that they’d be able to bring back would be $24,926,804—that gives Carmelo only about $500,000 of his trade bonus, forcing him to waive the rest for the trade to go through. It actually increases the Clippers’ wiggle room under the hard cap, since they’re sending out more salary than they’re taking back, and it takes LAC out of taxpayer territory by a few million. Then, next season when they likely won’t be restricted by the hard cap, they’ll have that $11 million Rivers TPE to work with—we’ve seen how valuable those big exceptions have been for Cleveland in adding role players for nothing.

Just for fun, here’s an even crazier idea that could never happen:

Send Wesley, Jamal, Paul Pierce, and Anderson all out for Carmelo Anthony. This trade is the only way I can conceive to legally land Anthony on the Clippers and retain Austin Rivers for the bench. Paul Pierce serves the same function as Austin Rivers above—he goes out for a TPE to create enough room for the Clippers to fit Melo under the hard cap, while the same Crawford/Johnson/Anderson package is actually swapped for Melo. The Clippers’ total outgoing salary in this deal is $22.9 million, and Melo’s incoming salary is the same as above—$24.9. The Clippers’ 2.6 million of wiggle room under the hard cap shrinks to $600,000, but it’s all legal, and the Clippers keep Austin. They’d have to use that last shred of flexibility to sign a player (they’d only have 12, and teams are required to carry 13), and the Knicks would have to cut three guys (presumably, Anderson, Pierce, and one of their own benchwarmers).

The problem, of course, is that there’s no trade value in that Clippers package—this is definitely a scenario where they’d have to work with Toronto and Boston to remove protections, freeing up two future first-round picks to go to the Knicks in 2021 and 2023.

There you have it—two scenarios where the trade can be manipulated so that Melo is able to waive his no-trade clause. The first is obviously more practical—the Knicks are getting the same package based around Austin Rivers, but some cap gymnastics force Anthony to waive his bonus, lowering the incoming salary for the Clippers and helping them dodge the tax and have enough wiggle room to fill out the roster with buyout guys. The second one is a much more bare-bones approach—the trade is legal but the Knicks are getting nothing of value (except for draft considerations) and the Clippers would be walking the hard cap tight rope. Is it worth it, should the Knicks be willing? Of course. Would the Knicks be willing? Of course not.

If the Clippers are interested in the Melo sweepstakes, they’re playing the waiting game right now. Anthony says he wants to stay, but that he’ll waive his no-trade clause if the Knicks decide to blow up the team and rebuild—beyond that, rumors have been all over the place, and often conflicting. If Anthony decides to pull the trigger by saying he’d waive his no-trade clause, things could start moving very quickly. Until then, nothing is possible.

******

Yes, I've read your posts and they make no practical sense in how the NBA actually operates.

If the Knicks could trade Melo to anyone, then they'd have some leverage

If the Knicks could trade Melo and his contract wasn't such a massive cap hit, then they'd have some leverage

If the Knicks were not in a situation where Melo can simply say "I want this team and this team only, and I'm not going if Players X , Y and Z are gone" then they'd have some leverage.

The Knicks have ZERO LEVERAGE. They have the trade deadline, which forces teams to consider getting Melo there sooner than later to get the team to gel, and this might the Clips last chance with Chris Paul, that's operates as INCENTIVE, but it's not true LEVERAGE.

Why take Crawford? Who says Crawford is a good idea in the first place if the team had a choice. THIS TEAM HAS NO CHOICE. Melo doesn't want to be here. Jackson doesn't want him here. Do you want a sulking even more anti-team Melo to poison the next two years of Zinger's career? To absorb the kind of cap hit that any incoming team would need to take, and since the NTC limits what the incoming team has to give, the Knicks are almost certainly going to HAVE TO TAKE AT LEAST ONE BAD CONTRACT BACK.

I am not calling Crawford an effective player anymore or a good contract, I am saying he's not going to lock in and poison Zinger for sure the next two years. Also his cap hit is smaller, which makes it easier to possibly move in the future. It's unlikely, but at least Crawford can be moved to ANY TEAM and there are more salary matches that fit for him. Rivers is young. I don't think he's a good fit or a good contract either, but guess what? The Clippers only have X number of players can move and make the salary constraints work that aren't part of the core Melo would accept to go to in order to waive the NTC.

You keep saying, that's a horrible package, that's not good enough. Well "NOT GOOD ENOUGH" is what you get when you trade a player for pennies on the dollar. The Knicks franchise is like some out of towner in the wrong NY street late at night, Melo is the guy mugging him with the giant hand cannon in his face. That's what the NTC does, it is weapon the player can leverage to use against the franchise. You seem to think the Knicks are also as well armed in this situation. They are not.

Melo can be traded NOW for 15 cents on the dollar. He can be traded at the deadline for 10 cents on the dollar. He can be traded in the offseason for 5 cents on the dollar. The longer the Knicks wait, the uglier it gets. It doesn't go from good to ugly, it goes from ugly to uglier.

This is not a trade to get assets and a player bounty. This is a player and contract dump. You act like it's the former when the reality is it is the later. I cannot force you to face the reality, just like no one could force you to face the reality for years that Melo was never going to help the Knicks win playoff games and contend.

Once again, you spent a long post to agree with what I am already saying. Maybe this will help. I THINK THE KNICKS HAVE NO LEVERAGE! Thats why its stupid to trade him! And again. 'WHY TRADE HIM IF WE GET 15 CENTS ON THE DOLLAR'? Just because you think he is our biggest problem? he is NOT. Noah 17m sccrub. Rose, not a PG, team defense. Again, just say you dont like the guy or dont like they way the play with him on team. But dont defend some stupid trade that doesn't make us better, younger, gives us draft picks or releaves cap space.

HofstraBBall wrote:..... Thats why its stupid to trade him! And again. 'WHY TRADE HIM IF WE GET 15 CENTS ON THE DOLLAR'? Just because you think he is our biggest problem? he is NOT. Noah 17m sccrub. Rose, not a PG, team defense. Again, just say you dont like the guy or dont like they way the play with him on team. But dont defend some stupid trade that doesn't make us better, younger, gives us draft picks or releaves cap space.

You are being obtuse on purpose. No one who has even a basic background of modern sports history and the NBA would make the argument you are making except to intentionally ignore countless example after example of elite players or formerly elite players going for peanuts. For many reason other than "value" for their actual production.

https://www.quora.com/What-NBA-players-have-forced-their-team-to-trade-their-rights-because-they-didnt-want-to-play-for-a-particular-team

Chris Webber - was drafted by the Magic, but traded to the Warriors on draft night. He battled with coach Don Nelson over his position preference. Nelly wanted to make him a Center, but C-Webb wanted to play PF. He exercised an escape-clause in his contract to trigger a trade to the Washington Bullets.

Carmelo Anthony - Melo held the Nuggets hostage in 2010-11 when he demanded to be traded to the Knicks, and only the Knicks. This considerably watered down the trade market for the Nuggets, as no other team was willing to make a trade for a player who was guaranteed to leave in free-agency.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - Kareem wanted to move to a bigger market and made his trade demands known to Milwuakee Bucks management. They eventually structured a deal to send him to the Lakers.

Wilt Chamberlain - Kind of the same situation as Kareem. He wanted to be in that hollywood market that L.A. provided, so he forced his way out of Philadelphia. I've read stories about Wilt also being offered equity in the 76ers after he retired. The owner who promised him equity died, and the new owner who took over would not honor the previous agreement.

Chris Paul - he made his disappointment with New Orleans known in closed circles. The Lakers struck 3-way deal that would land them CP3, send gasol to Houston, and Odom to NOLA. David Stern, who was acting as the de facto owner of the league-owned franchise, vetoed the trade for "basketball reasons" which was to CP3's incredible disappointment. He was later traded to Clippers, and Lob City (as well as DeAndre Jordan's ridiculous contract) was born.

Shaquille O'Neal - he forced his way out of two teams. After the '04 finals loss to the Detroit Pistons, Shaq was in contract negotiations with the Lakers. Management was disappointed with his work ethic, defense, and rebounding, and didn't feel he was worth the exorbitant amount of money he was asking for. Furthermore, he and Kobe were starting to clash, as Kobe wanted to be the alpha-dog of the team. He was then traded to Miami, where he won a Championship with Dwyane Wade. O'Neal started to clash with Pat Riley, and at one point, they even got into an altercation at a practice. Wade and Shaq's relationship was deteriorating as well, so the Heat opted to trade Shaq to the Suns.

Vince Carter - Vince was disappointed with the Raptors '04, when they missed the playoffs and traded away all their players. The Raptors were in a rebuilding effort, that Vince did not want to stick around for. He butted heads with new coach Sam Mitchell, who consistently benched him as punishment for Vince's trade demands. Jalen Rose even told a story about a physical altercation between coach and player.

******

http://www.thesportster.com/basketball/these-nba-stars-were-traded-for-just-about-nothing/

Top 15 NBA Stars That Were Traded For Next to Nothing

As we come to the end of the NBA season, and gear up for the playoffs, some fans are wishing that their team would have done a little more at the trade deadline to propel them to the postseason. Alas, the NBA is just like anything in life, it needs to be taken one day at a time. Making a poor decision can derail a franchise, but sometimes doing nothing in the first place is the better option.

There is always another team vying for any opportunity to take advantage of those whom are less fortunate or are willing to mortgage their future to win now. Some teams have done it in the past and ended up with decades long “curses.” Others have done it and ended up finding their glory.

Unless it is a money-saving maneuver, it is not always going to be clear which side will benefit more in any trade, but it’s a little more obvious when at least one superstar is involved. Simply put, an NBA superstar is a person that transcends the game to become a household name. There have been times, though, where a superstar gets traded away for what seems like dirt. Sometimes the franchise knows they have to rebuild, sometimes they think they are getting a smash deal, and sometimes they just get smashed.

Let’s take a look back, with our perfect hindsight of course, at some of the superstars that have been dealt for pennies on the dollar over the years. Let’s look at the teams that thought they were getting value for value, but hadn’t actually looked at the deal from all angles.
15. LaMarcus Aldridge to The Blazers
via blazersedge.com

via blazersedge.com

It is fitting to open our list with a draft-night trade. In 2006, The Portland Trailblazers dealt Tyrus Thomas and Viktor Khryapa to Chicago in exchange for LaMarcus Aldridge and a future second round pick (Demetris Nichols).

Aldridge would go on to to make four all star teams and lead The Blazers to five playoff appearances, while establishing himself as a dominant offensive force on the block.

Thomas never found his NBA game, fizzled out of the league, and played in Germany last year. Khryapa played a total of 42 games for the Bulls before being bought out of his contract, and returned to Russia.
14. Jermaine O’Neal to The Pacers
via yardbarker.com

via yardbarker.com

If we are going to give the Blazers credit for LaMarcus Aldridge, then we have to look at their Jermaine O’Neal move too. He didn’t ever do much to help the Blazers in their annual playoff runs while he was on the roster and was traded away for Dale Davis.

This trade was made in 2001, O’Neal won the league’s Most Improved Player award in 2002 and would go on to make six consecutive All Star appearances. The Blazers meanwhile slipped into their infamous “Jail Blazers” era, which helped to end their NBA-record consecutive playoff appearance streak.
13. Vince Carter to The Nets
via youtube.com

via youtube.com

“Vinsanity” was sent to the Nets in the 2004 off season for a slew of sub-par talent. The Raptors received Eric Williams and Aaron Williams, along with two draft picks (Joey Graham and Renaldo Balkman), plus Alonzo Mourning.

Mourning refused to play for the Raptors, never reported to camp, and was subsequently bought out of his contract. Carter on the other hand, went on to become the second highest scorer in Nets franchise history (Buck Williams), until he was passed by Brook Lopez.

The core of Jason Kidd, Richard Jefferson, and Vince Carter had some success together, but could never quite reach their potential.
12. Zack Randolph to The Warriors, then to The Grizzlies
Nelson Chenault-USA TODAY Sports

Nelson Chenault-USA TODAY Sports

Here’s a double whammy that shows the true stock-trader mentality many owners unfortunately feel.

When the Clippers lost Elton Brand in free agency to the Sixers, they traded with The Knicks for Zach Randolph. They sent Tim Thomas and Cuttino Mobely to the Big Apple in return for Z-Bo.

Randolph missed time that season due to a knee injury, but averaged 20 points when he was on the court. The Clips ended up with the worst record in the league, they drafted Blake Griffin, and the budding all-star big man was then sent packing again. This time in exchange with the Grizzlies for Quentin Richardson. He’s helped turn the Grizz into a perennial post-season team and even led them to the Western Conference Finals in 2013.
11. Amare Stoudemire to The Knicks
Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

Now, while Amare Stoudemire was not traded to The Knicks, it is still a testament to what can happen to a team when they lose an All Star player and The Suns did receive a $16.5 million trade exception for their loss.

They used the money to sign Josh Childress for five years and $34 million, and Hakim Warrick for four years and $18 million, as well as traded for Hedo Turkoglu for five years and $53 million.

S.T.A.T. dealt with injuries that following year, and never did deliver anything meaningful to Knicks faithful, but the Suns got nothing out of their star either.

10. Charles Barkley to the Suns
via wheelhousefactory.com

via wheelhousefactory.com

In 1992, Charles Barkley was traded from The 76ers to The Suns. The Suns actually gave up their leading scorer from the year before (Jeff Hornachek), as well as two throw-aways in Tim Perry and Andrew Lang.

The Sixers were enthusiastic about getting rid of the self-centered, ego-driven Barkley, and the Suns were just as enthusiastic about receiving him.

The Sixers would, in turn, do absolutely nothing in the next six years. The Suns would go on to make it to the finals the next year, with the Round Mound taking MVP honors. Good thing his ego was never rewarded with the title.
9. Chris Webber to The Kings
via bleacherreport.com

via bleacherreport.com

This is an interesting case here, because most NBA fans know C-Webb, but are not as familiar with Mitch Richmond or Otis Thorpe.

Richmond was an All Star in his own right, but gave the Wizards nothing after they got him from the Warriors. Webber went on to four more All Star appearances after the trade, Richmond none. Webber was only 25 at the time of the trade, Richmond was 33. Webber had 45.5 Win-Shares on the Warriors, Richmond had 10.1, and Thorpe a measly 3.7 with the Wizards.

The Warriors didn’t know at the time, but they got an All Star player for virtually nothing.
8. Dennis Rodman to The Spurs
via rodmanrebound.com

via rodmanrebound.com

Dennis Rodman as a part of the “Bad Boy Pistons” was one of, if not, the most tenacious rebounder in the league. He had temper issues (to say the least) and the team decided to go for chemistry over talent. They traded for a guy with what seemed like a bright future, Sean Elliot from The Spurs.

“Detroit knew I had a kidney condition before they got me, but they just wanted to get rid of Dennis Rodman,” Elliot said. “The Spurs didn’t know if I was going to be able to play more than another year or two, so this was a chance for them to get something in return”.
7. Scottie Pippen to The Bulls
via scottiepippen.com

via scottiepippen.com

During the 1987 NBA draft, the Bulls swapped draft rights for Scottie Pippen with The SuperSonics. The Sonics received Olden Polynice and future first and second round draft picks (Sylvester Gray and BJ Armstrong). The Bulls received one of the league’s all-time great defenders and all-around professionals in Pippen, as well as a first round pick of their own (Jeff Sanders). Draft day deals are always wrought with potential for highway robbery, but as these guys have never seen association action, it is impossible to predict who could get the upper hand. We now know, that this would go down as one of the worst trades in draft-day history.
6. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to The Lakers
via hangtime.blogs.nba.com

via hangtime.blogs.nba.com

Lew Alcinder had been to two NBA Finals and won one alongside Oscar Robertson for The Milwaukee Bucks. He then changed his name to Kareem, a Muslim name meaning “generous servant of the mighty one,” and demanded to be traded to a large-market team.

Kareem either wanted to go to New York where his family lived or to LA where he went to college. Kareem was granted the trade to LA after the Knicks showed little-to-no interest in him. He would go on to become one of the league’s most decorated players of all time and The Bucks wouldn’t return to their elite level for many years, as they were hamstrung by his demands and didn’t get back any elite talent.

5. Dominique Wilkins to The Hawks
via foxsports.com

via foxsports.com

Oh the possibilities the Utah Jazz could have had.

In the early ’80s, the cap rules were a bit different. The Jazz were $1 million over payroll, and Dominique Wilkins, who they just drafted, really wasn’t trying to play there in the first place. So they traded Wilkins to the Hawks in exchange for John Drew, Freeman Williams, and $1 million cash.

The Jazz would go on to draft John Stockton the subsequent year and then Karl Malone the following year. There is no doubt that unit could have dominated the NBA for at least a few years, but business is business in the association…
4. Julius Erving to The Sixers
via bleacherreport.com

via bleacherreport.com

“The Broken Promise.” The Nets’ owner at the time, Roy Boe, had promised to pay his star player, Julius Erving, big money once the team merged with the NBA. They had won two ABA championships already.

Through various fiscal penalties that came along with joining a new league, Boe was unable to pay Erving and was forced to sell him to Philladelphia for $3 million.

“The merger agreement killed The Nets as an NBA franchise,” Boe said. “The merger agreement got us into the NBA, but it forced me to destroy the team by selling Erving to pay the bill.”
3. Wilt Chamberlain to the Lakers
via rutrackersix.weebly.com

via rutrackersix.weebly.com

Wilt Chamberlain was a beast. He was an all-world talent and dominated the NBA. He still holds league records in points per game, rebounds per game, field goal percentage in a season, and minutes per game. He scored 100 points in a game for crying out loud! Wilt did have his vices, though, the main one being women.

Wilt had the option to be player-coach with the Sixers, but after visiting modern-day Babylon (Los Angeles) he demanded a trade or he would go to the ABA. This forced The Sixers hand and they moved him for vastly inferior talent.
2. Bill Russell to The Celtics
via nba.com

via nba.com

This one could have been number one since Bill Russell won an unprecedented 11 NBA titles in 13 years, while making 12 All Star teams and being named Most Valuable Player five times. He was considered the greatest of all time until Air Jordan came on the scene.

Russell was the penultimate team player and helped the Celtics to revolutionize defense in the NBA. The players that The St. Louis Hawks got in return for Russell both ended up making the Hall of Fame, so while this trade may not have been for total beans, The Celtics clearly came out on top. And it wasn’t close.
1. Kobe Bryant to The Lakers
Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

There has been much speculation on which side ultimately forced this draft-day trade. One thing is for sure, The Lakers got over on this deal.

One side says Kobe Bryant, through his agent, told The Hornets after they drafted him with the 13th pick, that he would not play there and that he would instead play his first professional season overseas. The other side says that The Hornets never truly wanted Kobe, and already had a guard and forward heavy lineup. Kobe himself says The Hornets’ coach called him and said they didn’t ever want him.

The Hornets ended up with Vlade Divac. The Lakers ended up with a top five all-time player.

HofstraBBall wrote:

TripleThreat wrote:

HofstraBBall wrote:
Addition? Crawford 14M 3 years left and 36 years old? Rivers 12M? Bench player. Redick 7M and FA at end of year?
No Leverage? Taht was my point for not trading him? But you think its a point for?
Accepting its time to start over? My point that its Phil's third try. Did you read my post?

http://www.clipsnation.com/2017/1/21/14344586/nba-trade-rumors-carmelo-anthony-clippers-knicks-bonus-jamal-crawford-austin-rivers

I’ve been asked a few times about Carmelo Anthony’s trade kicker this week. A lot of my first article is based around the idea that the Clippers don’t just have to take back Carmelo’s $24.5 million salary, but rather roughly $29.5 million as a result of Melo’s trade bonus. Here are the basics:

First of all, Anthony has a trade kicker worth 15% of his remaining contract. For 41 more games this year and 82 games each of the next two years, Anthony is scheduled to make $66,451,590. 15% of that salary is $9,967,739, and because the final year of Anthony’s deal is following an early termination option, that bonus must be split between the two guaranteed years of his contract. That extra $4,983,869 this year moves his salary up to $29,543,249. In order to match that salary, they’d have to send out about $23,554,600.

That one isn’t too rough—what’s rougher is the Clippers’ hard cap situation:

The Clippers are hard-capped at $117,287,000 because they used their full non-taxpayer mid-level exception this summer to sign Wesley Johnson. They currently have $2,546,968 in wiggle room underneath that hard cap. That means, essentially, that for any trade to be legal, the following must be true:

(incoming salary) - (outgoing salary) </= $2,546,968

By that formula, the Clippers must send out at least $26,996,281 in salary. It’s important to note that this is the far, far low end of the spectrum for outgoing salary: this places the Clippers at 100% of their hard cap allowance, without any room to sign players into their open roster spots. Depending on the deal, it’s likely that the Clippers will need at least some wiggle room for buyout additions.

So, pretty straightforward. Here’s what gets tricky: players are allowed to waive their trade bonuses under certain situations. It doesn’t really apply here, which is why I chose not to include it in the original article, but I want to talk about it now for two reasons: to clear up the most common question I’m getting on Melo trade math, and to raise an interesting asset management idea I reached following discussions on Melo’s trade kicker on twitter.

Let’s look at how the basic version of the trade goes down:

First, send Wesley Johnson anywhere, for nothing, into a team’s cap room or a TPE. This creates a 5.6M TPE for LAC, and gives them roughly 8.2M in room under the hard cap. Now, they can move Jamal Crawford and Austin Rivers for Anthony and have the space to take back Carmelo’s salary without matching it dollar-for-dollar. Still, Rivers and Crawford make a combined $24.25M—125% of that is over 30 million, which means Carmelo wouldn’t be able to waive part of that trade kicker.

The outcome of this deal is the same as that of the Rivers/Crawford/Johnson for Anthony swap I outlined before—even in a direct trade with the Knicks, they’d set the deal up so that a TPE would be created for Wesley Johnson’s 5.6M salary.

So, we tried something, but it didn’t let Melo waive his bonus, so his salary is still giant, and it didn’t save the Clippers from sending out anything extra.

Let’s switch some stuff around and build something that makes him waive his bonus:

If the Clippers send Austin, Jamal, Wesley, and Alan Anderson to the Knicks, they can create an even bigger TPE and force Melo to decline his bonus. From New York’s perspective, this is simply one trade—Anthony goes out (24.5M) and Rivers, Crawford, Johnson, and Anderson come back (30.8M), which is a legal trade. From the Clippers’ perspective, it works as two trades:

Rivers (11M) goes to the Knicks for nothing, creating an 11M TPE, and

Crawford, Johnson, and Anderson (19.8M) go to the Knicks for Anthony (24.5M), which is a legal trade

Since the Clippers would be sending out $19,861,443 in salary in the Anthony trade, the max that they’d be able to bring back would be $24,926,804—that gives Carmelo only about $500,000 of his trade bonus, forcing him to waive the rest for the trade to go through. It actually increases the Clippers’ wiggle room under the hard cap, since they’re sending out more salary than they’re taking back, and it takes LAC out of taxpayer territory by a few million. Then, next season when they likely won’t be restricted by the hard cap, they’ll have that $11 million Rivers TPE to work with—we’ve seen how valuable those big exceptions have been for Cleveland in adding role players for nothing.

Just for fun, here’s an even crazier idea that could never happen:

Send Wesley, Jamal, Paul Pierce, and Anderson all out for Carmelo Anthony. This trade is the only way I can conceive to legally land Anthony on the Clippers and retain Austin Rivers for the bench. Paul Pierce serves the same function as Austin Rivers above—he goes out for a TPE to create enough room for the Clippers to fit Melo under the hard cap, while the same Crawford/Johnson/Anderson package is actually swapped for Melo. The Clippers’ total outgoing salary in this deal is $22.9 million, and Melo’s incoming salary is the same as above—$24.9. The Clippers’ 2.6 million of wiggle room under the hard cap shrinks to $600,000, but it’s all legal, and the Clippers keep Austin. They’d have to use that last shred of flexibility to sign a player (they’d only have 12, and teams are required to carry 13), and the Knicks would have to cut three guys (presumably, Anderson, Pierce, and one of their own benchwarmers).

The problem, of course, is that there’s no trade value in that Clippers package—this is definitely a scenario where they’d have to work with Toronto and Boston to remove protections, freeing up two future first-round picks to go to the Knicks in 2021 and 2023.

There you have it—two scenarios where the trade can be manipulated so that Melo is able to waive his no-trade clause. The first is obviously more practical—the Knicks are getting the same package based around Austin Rivers, but some cap gymnastics force Anthony to waive his bonus, lowering the incoming salary for the Clippers and helping them dodge the tax and have enough wiggle room to fill out the roster with buyout guys. The second one is a much more bare-bones approach—the trade is legal but the Knicks are getting nothing of value (except for draft considerations) and the Clippers would be walking the hard cap tight rope. Is it worth it, should the Knicks be willing? Of course. Would the Knicks be willing? Of course not.

If the Clippers are interested in the Melo sweepstakes, they’re playing the waiting game right now. Anthony says he wants to stay, but that he’ll waive his no-trade clause if the Knicks decide to blow up the team and rebuild—beyond that, rumors have been all over the place, and often conflicting. If Anthony decides to pull the trigger by saying he’d waive his no-trade clause, things could start moving very quickly. Until then, nothing is possible.

******

Yes, I've read your posts and they make no practical sense in how the NBA actually operates.

If the Knicks could trade Melo to anyone, then they'd have some leverage

If the Knicks could trade Melo and his contract wasn't such a massive cap hit, then they'd have some leverage

If the Knicks were not in a situation where Melo can simply say "I want this team and this team only, and I'm not going if Players X , Y and Z are gone" then they'd have some leverage.

The Knicks have ZERO LEVERAGE. They have the trade deadline, which forces teams to consider getting Melo there sooner than later to get the team to gel, and this might the Clips last chance with Chris Paul, that's operates as INCENTIVE, but it's not true LEVERAGE.

Why take Crawford? Who says Crawford is a good idea in the first place if the team had a choice. THIS TEAM HAS NO CHOICE. Melo doesn't want to be here. Jackson doesn't want him here. Do you want a sulking even more anti-team Melo to poison the next two years of Zinger's career? To absorb the kind of cap hit that any incoming team would need to take, and since the NTC limits what the incoming team has to give, the Knicks are almost certainly going to HAVE TO TAKE AT LEAST ONE BAD CONTRACT BACK.

I am not calling Crawford an effective player anymore or a good contract, I am saying he's not going to lock in and poison Zinger for sure the next two years. Also his cap hit is smaller, which makes it easier to possibly move in the future. It's unlikely, but at least Crawford can be moved to ANY TEAM and there are more salary matches that fit for him. Rivers is young. I don't think he's a good fit or a good contract either, but guess what? The Clippers only have X number of players can move and make the salary constraints work that aren't part of the core Melo would accept to go to in order to waive the NTC.

You keep saying, that's a horrible package, that's not good enough. Well "NOT GOOD ENOUGH" is what you get when you trade a player for pennies on the dollar. The Knicks franchise is like some out of towner in the wrong NY street late at night, Melo is the guy mugging him with the giant hand cannon in his face. That's what the NTC does, it is weapon the player can leverage to use against the franchise. You seem to think the Knicks are also as well armed in this situation. They are not.

Melo can be traded NOW for 15 cents on the dollar. He can be traded at the deadline for 10 cents on the dollar. He can be traded in the offseason for 5 cents on the dollar. The longer the Knicks wait, the uglier it gets. It doesn't go from good to ugly, it goes from ugly to uglier.

This is not a trade to get assets and a player bounty. This is a player and contract dump. You act like it's the former when the reality is it is the later. I cannot force you to face the reality, just like no one could force you to face the reality for years that Melo was never going to help the Knicks win playoff games and contend.

Once again, you spent a long post to agree with what I am already saying. Maybe this will help. I THINK THE KNICKS HAVE NO LEVERAGE! Thats why its stupid to trade him! And again. 'WHY TRADE HIM IF WE GET 15 CENTS ON THE DOLLAR'? Just because you think he is our biggest problem? he is NOT. Noah 17m sccrub. Rose, not a PG, team defense. Again, just say you dont like the guy or dont like they way the play with him on team. But dont defend some stupid trade that doesn't make us better, younger, gives us draft picks or releaves cap space.

If you think his value has peaked (even if it's lower than it used to be), you trade him. It's called cutting your losses. If you think his value will go up, you wait to trade him. That's too big a gamble IMO if there are any offers that get us a decent combination of cap space, picks, or prospects. (And if you think he's worth keeping at the salary of a superstar, then we won't even have anything to discuss.)

The reason to trade Melo is it will open up capspace and allow you to get younger talent for the future. You will also get back one young starter at the very least. You open up opportunities for KP. No more question who is the #1 option in the halfcourt after Rose has the ball, it's KP.

Why you don't trade Melo is you won't be a better team without him, and you don't know for sure you are going to get young free agent talent in free agency. You also don't know for sure if KP is #1 material. He has shown he has great #2 potential, but its a toss up if he will succeed in Melo's role longterm.

I don't know what's best. We're about 1.5 games out of the playoffs. When this team plays together and hard, they look like the 2nd best team in the East. Talent is there for that. Problem is they only do it 3 times in 10 games. The other 7 games, they play with a lack of cohesion, a lack of togetherness and no defensive effort. If we played like a team consistently, KP gets more chances as do others and we can keep Melo and also develop KP (and win more games). Will that happen though? I don't know. It seems to me that Melo/Rose together is like cancer on a team. Both trickle into one on one play too often, leaving little for others. They don't play much defense or hard on that side. It's just a bad vibe from them.

I'd probably move Rose before Melo, because one of the two have to go to make this team less one on one oriented, but Rose is a free agent and 28 years old. Melo is almost 33 and has 2 more years on his contract. I think you can get more for Melo, and he's older. Which is why Phil is testing what he can get for him. Nothing's been agreed to. If we wanted a crap deal of Rivers and Crawford, it would have been done already. Seems we like Rivers, but want capspace with him or another young player. Lets see what happens. Lets also see if the next 2 weeks we get closer to the playoffs or lottery.

Orlando is saying they want a proven scorer and would be willing to trade one of their big man(with an emphasis on Ibaka or Vucevic) I think they might be the third team willing to take Jamal or Reddick (depending on who gets sent out). If that is so I wonder if Phil flips whoever he gets now. It's a interesting problem to have. Either of those guys could get the Knicks some draft picks or could be a part of the Knicks future core.

Melo's time in NY has long passed. If he is the team leader, then not playing defense is what others follow. Melo isn't in the back 9 he's on the 16th fairway and can't get on the green. His shooting is atrosity and that's al he does. He's he bounds as well, but he'd rather shoot til he gets his 30 even if it's at a 35% clip. This is about redirection. Allowing Hernangomez, KP among others to get experience and flourish. Yes it's called a rebuilding and having Melo in the mix won't allow it.
Likewise you're not gonna get value because he's 33 and has health issues and if he went to Cleveland Lebron would have to force him to play D. Enuf of Melo.

TripleThreat wrote:

HofstraBBall wrote:..... Thats why its stupid to trade him! And again. 'WHY TRADE HIM IF WE GET 15 CENTS ON THE DOLLAR'? Just because you think he is our biggest problem? he is NOT. Noah 17m sccrub. Rose, not a PG, team defense. Again, just say you dont like the guy or dont like they way the play with him on team. But dont defend some stupid trade that doesn't make us better, younger, gives us draft picks or releaves cap space.

You are being obtuse on purpose. No one who has even a basic background of modern sports history and the NBA would make the argument you are making except to intentionally ignore countless example after example of elite players or formerly elite players going for peanuts. For many reason other than "value" for their actual production.

https://www.quora.com/What-NBA-players-have-forced-their-team-to-trade-their-rights-because-they-didnt-want-to-play-for-a-particular-team

Chris Webber - was drafted by the Magic, but traded to the Warriors on draft night. He battled with coach Don Nelson over his position preference. Nelly wanted to make him a Center, but C-Webb wanted to play PF. He exercised an escape-clause in his contract to trigger a trade to the Washington Bullets.

Carmelo Anthony - Melo held the Nuggets hostage in 2010-11 when he demanded to be traded to the Knicks, and only the Knicks. This considerably watered down the trade market for the Nuggets, as no other team was willing to make a trade for a player who was guaranteed to leave in free-agency.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - Kareem wanted to move to a bigger market and made his trade demands known to Milwuakee Bucks management. They eventually structured a deal to send him to the Lakers.

Wilt Chamberlain - Kind of the same situation as Kareem. He wanted to be in that hollywood market that L.A. provided, so he forced his way out of Philadelphia. I've read stories about Wilt also being offered equity in the 76ers after he retired. The owner who promised him equity died, and the new owner who took over would not honor the previous agreement.

Chris Paul - he made his disappointment with New Orleans known in closed circles. The Lakers struck 3-way deal that would land them CP3, send gasol to Houston, and Odom to NOLA. David Stern, who was acting as the de facto owner of the league-owned franchise, vetoed the trade for "basketball reasons" which was to CP3's incredible disappointment. He was later traded to Clippers, and Lob City (as well as DeAndre Jordan's ridiculous contract) was born.

Shaquille O'Neal - he forced his way out of two teams. After the '04 finals loss to the Detroit Pistons, Shaq was in contract negotiations with the Lakers. Management was disappointed with his work ethic, defense, and rebounding, and didn't feel he was worth the exorbitant amount of money he was asking for. Furthermore, he and Kobe were starting to clash, as Kobe wanted to be the alpha-dog of the team. He was then traded to Miami, where he won a Championship with Dwyane Wade. O'Neal started to clash with Pat Riley, and at one point, they even got into an altercation at a practice. Wade and Shaq's relationship was deteriorating as well, so the Heat opted to trade Shaq to the Suns.

Vince Carter - Vince was disappointed with the Raptors '04, when they missed the playoffs and traded away all their players. The Raptors were in a rebuilding effort, that Vince did not want to stick around for. He butted heads with new coach Sam Mitchell, who consistently benched him as punishment for Vince's trade demands. Jalen Rose even told a story about a physical altercation between coach and player.

******

http://www.thesportster.com/basketball/these-nba-stars-were-traded-for-just-about-nothing/

Top 15 NBA Stars That Were Traded For Next to Nothing

As we come to the end of the NBA season, and gear up for the playoffs, some fans are wishing that their team would have done a little more at the trade deadline to propel them to the postseason. Alas, the NBA is just like anything in life, it needs to be taken one day at a time. Making a poor decision can derail a franchise, but sometimes doing nothing in the first place is the better option.

There is always another team vying for any opportunity to take advantage of those whom are less fortunate or are willing to mortgage their future to win now. Some teams have done it in the past and ended up with decades long “curses.” Others have done it and ended up finding their glory.

Unless it is a money-saving maneuver, it is not always going to be clear which side will benefit more in any trade, but it’s a little more obvious when at least one superstar is involved. Simply put, an NBA superstar is a person that transcends the game to become a household name. There have been times, though, where a superstar gets traded away for what seems like dirt. Sometimes the franchise knows they have to rebuild, sometimes they think they are getting a smash deal, and sometimes they just get smashed.

Let’s take a look back, with our perfect hindsight of course, at some of the superstars that have been dealt for pennies on the dollar over the years. Let’s look at the teams that thought they were getting value for value, but hadn’t actually looked at the deal from all angles.
15. LaMarcus Aldridge to The Blazers
via blazersedge.com

via blazersedge.com

It is fitting to open our list with a draft-night trade. In 2006, The Portland Trailblazers dealt Tyrus Thomas and Viktor Khryapa to Chicago in exchange for LaMarcus Aldridge and a future second round pick (Demetris Nichols).

Aldridge would go on to to make four all star teams and lead The Blazers to five playoff appearances, while establishing himself as a dominant offensive force on the block.

Thomas never found his NBA game, fizzled out of the league, and played in Germany last year. Khryapa played a total of 42 games for the Bulls before being bought out of his contract, and returned to Russia.
14. Jermaine O’Neal to The Pacers
via yardbarker.com

via yardbarker.com

If we are going to give the Blazers credit for LaMarcus Aldridge, then we have to look at their Jermaine O’Neal move too. He didn’t ever do much to help the Blazers in their annual playoff runs while he was on the roster and was traded away for Dale Davis.

This trade was made in 2001, O’Neal won the league’s Most Improved Player award in 2002 and would go on to make six consecutive All Star appearances. The Blazers meanwhile slipped into their infamous “Jail Blazers” era, which helped to end their NBA-record consecutive playoff appearance streak.
13. Vince Carter to The Nets
via youtube.com

via youtube.com

“Vinsanity” was sent to the Nets in the 2004 off season for a slew of sub-par talent. The Raptors received Eric Williams and Aaron Williams, along with two draft picks (Joey Graham and Renaldo Balkman), plus Alonzo Mourning.

Mourning refused to play for the Raptors, never reported to camp, and was subsequently bought out of his contract. Carter on the other hand, went on to become the second highest scorer in Nets franchise history (Buck Williams), until he was passed by Brook Lopez.

The core of Jason Kidd, Richard Jefferson, and Vince Carter had some success together, but could never quite reach their potential.
12. Zack Randolph to The Warriors, then to The Grizzlies
Nelson Chenault-USA TODAY Sports

Nelson Chenault-USA TODAY Sports

Here’s a double whammy that shows the true stock-trader mentality many owners unfortunately feel.

When the Clippers lost Elton Brand in free agency to the Sixers, they traded with The Knicks for Zach Randolph. They sent Tim Thomas and Cuttino Mobely to the Big Apple in return for Z-Bo.

Randolph missed time that season due to a knee injury, but averaged 20 points when he was on the court. The Clips ended up with the worst record in the league, they drafted Blake Griffin, and the budding all-star big man was then sent packing again. This time in exchange with the Grizzlies for Quentin Richardson. He’s helped turn the Grizz into a perennial post-season team and even led them to the Western Conference Finals in 2013.
11. Amare Stoudemire to The Knicks
Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

Now, while Amare Stoudemire was not traded to The Knicks, it is still a testament to what can happen to a team when they lose an All Star player and The Suns did receive a $16.5 million trade exception for their loss.

They used the money to sign Josh Childress for five years and $34 million, and Hakim Warrick for four years and $18 million, as well as traded for Hedo Turkoglu for five years and $53 million.

S.T.A.T. dealt with injuries that following year, and never did deliver anything meaningful to Knicks faithful, but the Suns got nothing out of their star either.

10. Charles Barkley to the Suns
via wheelhousefactory.com

via wheelhousefactory.com

In 1992, Charles Barkley was traded from The 76ers to The Suns. The Suns actually gave up their leading scorer from the year before (Jeff Hornachek), as well as two throw-aways in Tim Perry and Andrew Lang.

The Sixers were enthusiastic about getting rid of the self-centered, ego-driven Barkley, and the Suns were just as enthusiastic about receiving him.

The Sixers would, in turn, do absolutely nothing in the next six years. The Suns would go on to make it to the finals the next year, with the Round Mound taking MVP honors. Good thing his ego was never rewarded with the title.
9. Chris Webber to The Kings
via bleacherreport.com

via bleacherreport.com

This is an interesting case here, because most NBA fans know C-Webb, but are not as familiar with Mitch Richmond or Otis Thorpe.

Richmond was an All Star in his own right, but gave the Wizards nothing after they got him from the Warriors. Webber went on to four more All Star appearances after the trade, Richmond none. Webber was only 25 at the time of the trade, Richmond was 33. Webber had 45.5 Win-Shares on the Warriors, Richmond had 10.1, and Thorpe a measly 3.7 with the Wizards.

The Warriors didn’t know at the time, but they got an All Star player for virtually nothing.
8. Dennis Rodman to The Spurs
via rodmanrebound.com

via rodmanrebound.com

Dennis Rodman as a part of the “Bad Boy Pistons” was one of, if not, the most tenacious rebounder in the league. He had temper issues (to say the least) and the team decided to go for chemistry over talent. They traded for a guy with what seemed like a bright future, Sean Elliot from The Spurs.

“Detroit knew I had a kidney condition before they got me, but they just wanted to get rid of Dennis Rodman,” Elliot said. “The Spurs didn’t know if I was going to be able to play more than another year or two, so this was a chance for them to get something in return”.
7. Scottie Pippen to The Bulls
via scottiepippen.com

via scottiepippen.com

During the 1987 NBA draft, the Bulls swapped draft rights for Scottie Pippen with The SuperSonics. The Sonics received Olden Polynice and future first and second round draft picks (Sylvester Gray and BJ Armstrong). The Bulls received one of the league’s all-time great defenders and all-around professionals in Pippen, as well as a first round pick of their own (Jeff Sanders). Draft day deals are always wrought with potential for highway robbery, but as these guys have never seen association action, it is impossible to predict who could get the upper hand. We now know, that this would go down as one of the worst trades in draft-day history.
6. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to The Lakers
via hangtime.blogs.nba.com

via hangtime.blogs.nba.com

Lew Alcinder had been to two NBA Finals and won one alongside Oscar Robertson for The Milwaukee Bucks. He then changed his name to Kareem, a Muslim name meaning “generous servant of the mighty one,” and demanded to be traded to a large-market team.

Kareem either wanted to go to New York where his family lived or to LA where he went to college. Kareem was granted the trade to LA after the Knicks showed little-to-no interest in him. He would go on to become one of the league’s most decorated players of all time and The Bucks wouldn’t return to their elite level for many years, as they were hamstrung by his demands and didn’t get back any elite talent.

5. Dominique Wilkins to The Hawks
via foxsports.com

via foxsports.com

Oh the possibilities the Utah Jazz could have had.

In the early ’80s, the cap rules were a bit different. The Jazz were $1 million over payroll, and Dominique Wilkins, who they just drafted, really wasn’t trying to play there in the first place. So they traded Wilkins to the Hawks in exchange for John Drew, Freeman Williams, and $1 million cash.

The Jazz would go on to draft John Stockton the subsequent year and then Karl Malone the following year. There is no doubt that unit could have dominated the NBA for at least a few years, but business is business in the association…
4. Julius Erving to The Sixers
via bleacherreport.com

via bleacherreport.com

“The Broken Promise.” The Nets’ owner at the time, Roy Boe, had promised to pay his star player, Julius Erving, big money once the team merged with the NBA. They had won two ABA championships already.

Through various fiscal penalties that came along with joining a new league, Boe was unable to pay Erving and was forced to sell him to Philladelphia for $3 million.

“The merger agreement killed The Nets as an NBA franchise,” Boe said. “The merger agreement got us into the NBA, but it forced me to destroy the team by selling Erving to pay the bill.”
3. Wilt Chamberlain to the Lakers
via rutrackersix.weebly.com

via rutrackersix.weebly.com

Wilt Chamberlain was a beast. He was an all-world talent and dominated the NBA. He still holds league records in points per game, rebounds per game, field goal percentage in a season, and minutes per game. He scored 100 points in a game for crying out loud! Wilt did have his vices, though, the main one being women.

Wilt had the option to be player-coach with the Sixers, but after visiting modern-day Babylon (Los Angeles) he demanded a trade or he would go to the ABA. This forced The Sixers hand and they moved him for vastly inferior talent.
2. Bill Russell to The Celtics
via nba.com

via nba.com

This one could have been number one since Bill Russell won an unprecedented 11 NBA titles in 13 years, while making 12 All Star teams and being named Most Valuable Player five times. He was considered the greatest of all time until Air Jordan came on the scene.

Russell was the penultimate team player and helped the Celtics to revolutionize defense in the NBA. The players that The St. Louis Hawks got in return for Russell both ended up making the Hall of Fame, so while this trade may not have been for total beans, The Celtics clearly came out on top. And it wasn’t close.
1. Kobe Bryant to The Lakers
Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

There has been much speculation on which side ultimately forced this draft-day trade. One thing is for sure, The Lakers got over on this deal.

One side says Kobe Bryant, through his agent, told The Hornets after they drafted him with the 13th pick, that he would not play there and that he would instead play his first professional season overseas. The other side says that The Hornets never truly wanted Kobe, and already had a guard and forward heavy lineup. Kobe himself says The Hornets’ coach called him and said they didn’t ever want him.

The Hornets ended up with Vlade Divac. The Lakers ended up with a top five all-time player.

Another wasted effort. You just gave a whole bunch of examples of guys forcing their teams to trade them for peanuts. Yet leaving out how Melo fits in this category. Last I checked he is not forcing NY to trade him? Then you give a whole bucnh of useless examples of needles in the hay stack. Most dealing with draft picks? Exactly what draft picks have been proposed? You do know the name of thread? Austin F..n Rivers fits in your argument above how? Think we are done here. Erving=Melo how? Is there a new league coming? Lmao Nevermind, dont want another obscure long comparison.

Bonn1997 wrote:

HofstraBBall wrote:

TripleThreat wrote:

HofstraBBall wrote:
Addition? Crawford 14M 3 years left and 36 years old? Rivers 12M? Bench player. Redick 7M and FA at end of year?
No Leverage? Taht was my point for not trading him? But you think its a point for?
Accepting its time to start over? My point that its Phil's third try. Did you read my post?

http://www.clipsnation.com/2017/1/21/14344586/nba-trade-rumors-carmelo-anthony-clippers-knicks-bonus-jamal-crawford-austin-rivers

I’ve been asked a few times about Carmelo Anthony’s trade kicker this week. A lot of my first article is based around the idea that the Clippers don’t just have to take back Carmelo’s $24.5 million salary, but rather roughly $29.5 million as a result of Melo’s trade bonus. Here are the basics:

First of all, Anthony has a trade kicker worth 15% of his remaining contract. For 41 more games this year and 82 games each of the next two years, Anthony is scheduled to make $66,451,590. 15% of that salary is $9,967,739, and because the final year of Anthony’s deal is following an early termination option, that bonus must be split between the two guaranteed years of his contract. That extra $4,983,869 this year moves his salary up to $29,543,249. In order to match that salary, they’d have to send out about $23,554,600.

That one isn’t too rough—what’s rougher is the Clippers’ hard cap situation:

The Clippers are hard-capped at $117,287,000 because they used their full non-taxpayer mid-level exception this summer to sign Wesley Johnson. They currently have $2,546,968 in wiggle room underneath that hard cap. That means, essentially, that for any trade to be legal, the following must be true:

(incoming salary) - (outgoing salary) </= $2,546,968

By that formula, the Clippers must send out at least $26,996,281 in salary. It’s important to note that this is the far, far low end of the spectrum for outgoing salary: this places the Clippers at 100% of their hard cap allowance, without any room to sign players into their open roster spots. Depending on the deal, it’s likely that the Clippers will need at least some wiggle room for buyout additions.

So, pretty straightforward. Here’s what gets tricky: players are allowed to waive their trade bonuses under certain situations. It doesn’t really apply here, which is why I chose not to include it in the original article, but I want to talk about it now for two reasons: to clear up the most common question I’m getting on Melo trade math, and to raise an interesting asset management idea I reached following discussions on Melo’s trade kicker on twitter.

Let’s look at how the basic version of the trade goes down:

First, send Wesley Johnson anywhere, for nothing, into a team’s cap room or a TPE. This creates a 5.6M TPE for LAC, and gives them roughly 8.2M in room under the hard cap. Now, they can move Jamal Crawford and Austin Rivers for Anthony and have the space to take back Carmelo’s salary without matching it dollar-for-dollar. Still, Rivers and Crawford make a combined $24.25M—125% of that is over 30 million, which means Carmelo wouldn’t be able to waive part of that trade kicker.

The outcome of this deal is the same as that of the Rivers/Crawford/Johnson for Anthony swap I outlined before—even in a direct trade with the Knicks, they’d set the deal up so that a TPE would be created for Wesley Johnson’s 5.6M salary.

So, we tried something, but it didn’t let Melo waive his bonus, so his salary is still giant, and it didn’t save the Clippers from sending out anything extra.

Let’s switch some stuff around and build something that makes him waive his bonus:

If the Clippers send Austin, Jamal, Wesley, and Alan Anderson to the Knicks, they can create an even bigger TPE and force Melo to decline his bonus. From New York’s perspective, this is simply one trade—Anthony goes out (24.5M) and Rivers, Crawford, Johnson, and Anderson come back (30.8M), which is a legal trade. From the Clippers’ perspective, it works as two trades:

Rivers (11M) goes to the Knicks for nothing, creating an 11M TPE, and

Crawford, Johnson, and Anderson (19.8M) go to the Knicks for Anthony (24.5M), which is a legal trade

Since the Clippers would be sending out $19,861,443 in salary in the Anthony trade, the max that they’d be able to bring back would be $24,926,804—that gives Carmelo only about $500,000 of his trade bonus, forcing him to waive the rest for the trade to go through. It actually increases the Clippers’ wiggle room under the hard cap, since they’re sending out more salary than they’re taking back, and it takes LAC out of taxpayer territory by a few million. Then, next season when they likely won’t be restricted by the hard cap, they’ll have that $11 million Rivers TPE to work with—we’ve seen how valuable those big exceptions have been for Cleveland in adding role players for nothing.

Just for fun, here’s an even crazier idea that could never happen:

Send Wesley, Jamal, Paul Pierce, and Anderson all out for Carmelo Anthony. This trade is the only way I can conceive to legally land Anthony on the Clippers and retain Austin Rivers for the bench. Paul Pierce serves the same function as Austin Rivers above—he goes out for a TPE to create enough room for the Clippers to fit Melo under the hard cap, while the same Crawford/Johnson/Anderson package is actually swapped for Melo. The Clippers’ total outgoing salary in this deal is $22.9 million, and Melo’s incoming salary is the same as above—$24.9. The Clippers’ 2.6 million of wiggle room under the hard cap shrinks to $600,000, but it’s all legal, and the Clippers keep Austin. They’d have to use that last shred of flexibility to sign a player (they’d only have 12, and teams are required to carry 13), and the Knicks would have to cut three guys (presumably, Anderson, Pierce, and one of their own benchwarmers).

The problem, of course, is that there’s no trade value in that Clippers package—this is definitely a scenario where they’d have to work with Toronto and Boston to remove protections, freeing up two future first-round picks to go to the Knicks in 2021 and 2023.

There you have it—two scenarios where the trade can be manipulated so that Melo is able to waive his no-trade clause. The first is obviously more practical—the Knicks are getting the same package based around Austin Rivers, but some cap gymnastics force Anthony to waive his bonus, lowering the incoming salary for the Clippers and helping them dodge the tax and have enough wiggle room to fill out the roster with buyout guys. The second one is a much more bare-bones approach—the trade is legal but the Knicks are getting nothing of value (except for draft considerations) and the Clippers would be walking the hard cap tight rope. Is it worth it, should the Knicks be willing? Of course. Would the Knicks be willing? Of course not.

If the Clippers are interested in the Melo sweepstakes, they’re playing the waiting game right now. Anthony says he wants to stay, but that he’ll waive his no-trade clause if the Knicks decide to blow up the team and rebuild—beyond that, rumors have been all over the place, and often conflicting. If Anthony decides to pull the trigger by saying he’d waive his no-trade clause, things could start moving very quickly. Until then, nothing is possible.

******

Yes, I've read your posts and they make no practical sense in how the NBA actually operates.

If the Knicks could trade Melo to anyone, then they'd have some leverage

If the Knicks could trade Melo and his contract wasn't such a massive cap hit, then they'd have some leverage

If the Knicks were not in a situation where Melo can simply say "I want this team and this team only, and I'm not going if Players X , Y and Z are gone" then they'd have some leverage.

The Knicks have ZERO LEVERAGE. They have the trade deadline, which forces teams to consider getting Melo there sooner than later to get the team to gel, and this might the Clips last chance with Chris Paul, that's operates as INCENTIVE, but it's not true LEVERAGE.

Why take Crawford? Who says Crawford is a good idea in the first place if the team had a choice. THIS TEAM HAS NO CHOICE. Melo doesn't want to be here. Jackson doesn't want him here. Do you want a sulking even more anti-team Melo to poison the next two years of Zinger's career? To absorb the kind of cap hit that any incoming team would need to take, and since the NTC limits what the incoming team has to give, the Knicks are almost certainly going to HAVE TO TAKE AT LEAST ONE BAD CONTRACT BACK.

I am not calling Crawford an effective player anymore or a good contract, I am saying he's not going to lock in and poison Zinger for sure the next two years. Also his cap hit is smaller, which makes it easier to possibly move in the future. It's unlikely, but at least Crawford can be moved to ANY TEAM and there are more salary matches that fit for him. Rivers is young. I don't think he's a good fit or a good contract either, but guess what? The Clippers only have X number of players can move and make the salary constraints work that aren't part of the core Melo would accept to go to in order to waive the NTC.

You keep saying, that's a horrible package, that's not good enough. Well "NOT GOOD ENOUGH" is what you get when you trade a player for pennies on the dollar. The Knicks franchise is like some out of towner in the wrong NY street late at night, Melo is the guy mugging him with the giant hand cannon in his face. That's what the NTC does, it is weapon the player can leverage to use against the franchise. You seem to think the Knicks are also as well armed in this situation. They are not.

Melo can be traded NOW for 15 cents on the dollar. He can be traded at the deadline for 10 cents on the dollar. He can be traded in the offseason for 5 cents on the dollar. The longer the Knicks wait, the uglier it gets. It doesn't go from good to ugly, it goes from ugly to uglier.

This is not a trade to get assets and a player bounty. This is a player and contract dump. You act like it's the former when the reality is it is the later. I cannot force you to face the reality, just like no one could force you to face the reality for years that Melo was never going to help the Knicks win playoff games and contend.

Once again, you spent a long post to agree with what I am already saying. Maybe this will help. I THINK THE KNICKS HAVE NO LEVERAGE! Thats why its stupid to trade him! And again. 'WHY TRADE HIM IF WE GET 15 CENTS ON THE DOLLAR'? Just because you think he is our biggest problem? he is NOT. Noah 17m sccrub. Rose, not a PG, team defense. Again, just say you dont like the guy or dont like they way the play with him on team. But dont defend some stupid trade that doesn't make us better, younger, gives us draft picks or releaves cap space.

If you think his value has peaked (even if it's lower than it used to be), you trade him. It's called cutting your losses. If you think his value will go up, you wait to trade him. That's too big a gamble IMO if there are any offers that get us a decent combination of cap space, picks, or prospects. (And if you think he's worth keeping at the salary of a superstar, then we won't even have anything to discuss.)

If you think its worth replacing the salary of a superstar(Our best player), with salary of a Crawford 14M 36 year old who has it guaranteed through 2019 btw) and a 11M overpaid bench player. than we are done here! The problem with fans is they convince themselves lateral moves will help an organazation. Just because they cant take losing. Sometimes its better to stay put and solve real problems.

HofstraBBall wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

HofstraBBall wrote:

TripleThreat wrote:

HofstraBBall wrote:
Addition? Crawford 14M 3 years left and 36 years old? Rivers 12M? Bench player. Redick 7M and FA at end of year?
No Leverage? Taht was my point for not trading him? But you think its a point for?
Accepting its time to start over? My point that its Phil's third try. Did you read my post?

http://www.clipsnation.com/2017/1/21/14344586/nba-trade-rumors-carmelo-anthony-clippers-knicks-bonus-jamal-crawford-austin-rivers

I’ve been asked a few times about Carmelo Anthony’s trade kicker this week. A lot of my first article is based around the idea that the Clippers don’t just have to take back Carmelo’s $24.5 million salary, but rather roughly $29.5 million as a result of Melo’s trade bonus. Here are the basics:

First of all, Anthony has a trade kicker worth 15% of his remaining contract. For 41 more games this year and 82 games each of the next two years, Anthony is scheduled to make $66,451,590. 15% of that salary is $9,967,739, and because the final year of Anthony’s deal is following an early termination option, that bonus must be split between the two guaranteed years of his contract. That extra $4,983,869 this year moves his salary up to $29,543,249. In order to match that salary, they’d have to send out about $23,554,600.

That one isn’t too rough—what’s rougher is the Clippers’ hard cap situation:

The Clippers are hard-capped at $117,287,000 because they used their full non-taxpayer mid-level exception this summer to sign Wesley Johnson. They currently have $2,546,968 in wiggle room underneath that hard cap. That means, essentially, that for any trade to be legal, the following must be true:

(incoming salary) - (outgoing salary) </= $2,546,968

By that formula, the Clippers must send out at least $26,996,281 in salary. It’s important to note that this is the far, far low end of the spectrum for outgoing salary: this places the Clippers at 100% of their hard cap allowance, without any room to sign players into their open roster spots. Depending on the deal, it’s likely that the Clippers will need at least some wiggle room for buyout additions.

So, pretty straightforward. Here’s what gets tricky: players are allowed to waive their trade bonuses under certain situations. It doesn’t really apply here, which is why I chose not to include it in the original article, but I want to talk about it now for two reasons: to clear up the most common question I’m getting on Melo trade math, and to raise an interesting asset management idea I reached following discussions on Melo’s trade kicker on twitter.

Let’s look at how the basic version of the trade goes down:

First, send Wesley Johnson anywhere, for nothing, into a team’s cap room or a TPE. This creates a 5.6M TPE for LAC, and gives them roughly 8.2M in room under the hard cap. Now, they can move Jamal Crawford and Austin Rivers for Anthony and have the space to take back Carmelo’s salary without matching it dollar-for-dollar. Still, Rivers and Crawford make a combined $24.25M—125% of that is over 30 million, which means Carmelo wouldn’t be able to waive part of that trade kicker.

The outcome of this deal is the same as that of the Rivers/Crawford/Johnson for Anthony swap I outlined before—even in a direct trade with the Knicks, they’d set the deal up so that a TPE would be created for Wesley Johnson’s 5.6M salary.

So, we tried something, but it didn’t let Melo waive his bonus, so his salary is still giant, and it didn’t save the Clippers from sending out anything extra.

Let’s switch some stuff around and build something that makes him waive his bonus:

If the Clippers send Austin, Jamal, Wesley, and Alan Anderson to the Knicks, they can create an even bigger TPE and force Melo to decline his bonus. From New York’s perspective, this is simply one trade—Anthony goes out (24.5M) and Rivers, Crawford, Johnson, and Anderson come back (30.8M), which is a legal trade. From the Clippers’ perspective, it works as two trades:

Rivers (11M) goes to the Knicks for nothing, creating an 11M TPE, and

Crawford, Johnson, and Anderson (19.8M) go to the Knicks for Anthony (24.5M), which is a legal trade

Since the Clippers would be sending out $19,861,443 in salary in the Anthony trade, the max that they’d be able to bring back would be $24,926,804—that gives Carmelo only about $500,000 of his trade bonus, forcing him to waive the rest for the trade to go through. It actually increases the Clippers’ wiggle room under the hard cap, since they’re sending out more salary than they’re taking back, and it takes LAC out of taxpayer territory by a few million. Then, next season when they likely won’t be restricted by the hard cap, they’ll have that $11 million Rivers TPE to work with—we’ve seen how valuable those big exceptions have been for Cleveland in adding role players for nothing.

Just for fun, here’s an even crazier idea that could never happen:

Send Wesley, Jamal, Paul Pierce, and Anderson all out for Carmelo Anthony. This trade is the only way I can conceive to legally land Anthony on the Clippers and retain Austin Rivers for the bench. Paul Pierce serves the same function as Austin Rivers above—he goes out for a TPE to create enough room for the Clippers to fit Melo under the hard cap, while the same Crawford/Johnson/Anderson package is actually swapped for Melo. The Clippers’ total outgoing salary in this deal is $22.9 million, and Melo’s incoming salary is the same as above—$24.9. The Clippers’ 2.6 million of wiggle room under the hard cap shrinks to $600,000, but it’s all legal, and the Clippers keep Austin. They’d have to use that last shred of flexibility to sign a player (they’d only have 12, and teams are required to carry 13), and the Knicks would have to cut three guys (presumably, Anderson, Pierce, and one of their own benchwarmers).

The problem, of course, is that there’s no trade value in that Clippers package—this is definitely a scenario where they’d have to work with Toronto and Boston to remove protections, freeing up two future first-round picks to go to the Knicks in 2021 and 2023.

There you have it—two scenarios where the trade can be manipulated so that Melo is able to waive his no-trade clause. The first is obviously more practical—the Knicks are getting the same package based around Austin Rivers, but some cap gymnastics force Anthony to waive his bonus, lowering the incoming salary for the Clippers and helping them dodge the tax and have enough wiggle room to fill out the roster with buyout guys. The second one is a much more bare-bones approach—the trade is legal but the Knicks are getting nothing of value (except for draft considerations) and the Clippers would be walking the hard cap tight rope. Is it worth it, should the Knicks be willing? Of course. Would the Knicks be willing? Of course not.

If the Clippers are interested in the Melo sweepstakes, they’re playing the waiting game right now. Anthony says he wants to stay, but that he’ll waive his no-trade clause if the Knicks decide to blow up the team and rebuild—beyond that, rumors have been all over the place, and often conflicting. If Anthony decides to pull the trigger by saying he’d waive his no-trade clause, things could start moving very quickly. Until then, nothing is possible.

******

Yes, I've read your posts and they make no practical sense in how the NBA actually operates.

If the Knicks could trade Melo to anyone, then they'd have some leverage

If the Knicks could trade Melo and his contract wasn't such a massive cap hit, then they'd have some leverage

If the Knicks were not in a situation where Melo can simply say "I want this team and this team only, and I'm not going if Players X , Y and Z are gone" then they'd have some leverage.

The Knicks have ZERO LEVERAGE. They have the trade deadline, which forces teams to consider getting Melo there sooner than later to get the team to gel, and this might the Clips last chance with Chris Paul, that's operates as INCENTIVE, but it's not true LEVERAGE.

Why take Crawford? Who says Crawford is a good idea in the first place if the team had a choice. THIS TEAM HAS NO CHOICE. Melo doesn't want to be here. Jackson doesn't want him here. Do you want a sulking even more anti-team Melo to poison the next two years of Zinger's career? To absorb the kind of cap hit that any incoming team would need to take, and since the NTC limits what the incoming team has to give, the Knicks are almost certainly going to HAVE TO TAKE AT LEAST ONE BAD CONTRACT BACK.

I am not calling Crawford an effective player anymore or a good contract, I am saying he's not going to lock in and poison Zinger for sure the next two years. Also his cap hit is smaller, which makes it easier to possibly move in the future. It's unlikely, but at least Crawford can be moved to ANY TEAM and there are more salary matches that fit for him. Rivers is young. I don't think he's a good fit or a good contract either, but guess what? The Clippers only have X number of players can move and make the salary constraints work that aren't part of the core Melo would accept to go to in order to waive the NTC.

You keep saying, that's a horrible package, that's not good enough. Well "NOT GOOD ENOUGH" is what you get when you trade a player for pennies on the dollar. The Knicks franchise is like some out of towner in the wrong NY street late at night, Melo is the guy mugging him with the giant hand cannon in his face. That's what the NTC does, it is weapon the player can leverage to use against the franchise. You seem to think the Knicks are also as well armed in this situation. They are not.

Melo can be traded NOW for 15 cents on the dollar. He can be traded at the deadline for 10 cents on the dollar. He can be traded in the offseason for 5 cents on the dollar. The longer the Knicks wait, the uglier it gets. It doesn't go from good to ugly, it goes from ugly to uglier.

This is not a trade to get assets and a player bounty. This is a player and contract dump. You act like it's the former when the reality is it is the later. I cannot force you to face the reality, just like no one could force you to face the reality for years that Melo was never going to help the Knicks win playoff games and contend.

Once again, you spent a long post to agree with what I am already saying. Maybe this will help. I THINK THE KNICKS HAVE NO LEVERAGE! Thats why its stupid to trade him! And again. 'WHY TRADE HIM IF WE GET 15 CENTS ON THE DOLLAR'? Just because you think he is our biggest problem? he is NOT. Noah 17m sccrub. Rose, not a PG, team defense. Again, just say you dont like the guy or dont like they way the play with him on team. But dont defend some stupid trade that doesn't make us better, younger, gives us draft picks or releaves cap space.

If you think his value has peaked (even if it's lower than it used to be), you trade him. It's called cutting your losses. If you think his value will go up, you wait to trade him. That's too big a gamble IMO if there are any offers that get us a decent combination of cap space, picks, or prospects. (And if you think he's worth keeping at the salary of a superstar, then we won't even have anything to discuss.)

If you think its worth replacing the salary of a superstar(Our best player), with salary of a Crawford 14M 36 year old who has it guaranteed through 2019 btw) and a 11M overpaid bench player. than we are done here! The problem with fans is they convince themselves lateral moves will help an organazation. Just because they cant take losing. Sometimes its better to stay put and solve real problems.

To be fair it seems like Phil refuses to take back Jamal which is holding the deal up. Either a third team takes him (and sends something better back to the Knicks) or the Clippers will have to add Reddick and filler. Also we're definitely getting the 2021 and possibly their 2023. So you got to hope for a Brooklyn situation on those picks as well.

wargames wrote:

HofstraBBall wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

HofstraBBall wrote:

TripleThreat wrote:

HofstraBBall wrote:
Addition? Crawford 14M 3 years left and 36 years old? Rivers 12M? Bench player. Redick 7M and FA at end of year?
No Leverage? Taht was my point for not trading him? But you think its a point for?
Accepting its time to start over? My point that its Phil's third try. Did you read my post?

http://www.clipsnation.com/2017/1/21/14344586/nba-trade-rumors-carmelo-anthony-clippers-knicks-bonus-jamal-crawford-austin-rivers

I’ve been asked a few times about Carmelo Anthony’s trade kicker this week. A lot of my first article is based around the idea that the Clippers don’t just have to take back Carmelo’s $24.5 million salary, but rather roughly $29.5 million as a result of Melo’s trade bonus. Here are the basics:

First of all, Anthony has a trade kicker worth 15% of his remaining contract. For 41 more games this year and 82 games each of the next two years, Anthony is scheduled to make $66,451,590. 15% of that salary is $9,967,739, and because the final year of Anthony’s deal is following an early termination option, that bonus must be split between the two guaranteed years of his contract. That extra $4,983,869 this year moves his salary up to $29,543,249. In order to match that salary, they’d have to send out about $23,554,600.

That one isn’t too rough—what’s rougher is the Clippers’ hard cap situation:

The Clippers are hard-capped at $117,287,000 because they used their full non-taxpayer mid-level exception this summer to sign Wesley Johnson. They currently have $2,546,968 in wiggle room underneath that hard cap. That means, essentially, that for any trade to be legal, the following must be true:

(incoming salary) - (outgoing salary) </= $2,546,968

By that formula, the Clippers must send out at least $26,996,281 in salary. It’s important to note that this is the far, far low end of the spectrum for outgoing salary: this places the Clippers at 100% of their hard cap allowance, without any room to sign players into their open roster spots. Depending on the deal, it’s likely that the Clippers will need at least some wiggle room for buyout additions.

So, pretty straightforward. Here’s what gets tricky: players are allowed to waive their trade bonuses under certain situations. It doesn’t really apply here, which is why I chose not to include it in the original article, but I want to talk about it now for two reasons: to clear up the most common question I’m getting on Melo trade math, and to raise an interesting asset management idea I reached following discussions on Melo’s trade kicker on twitter.

Let’s look at how the basic version of the trade goes down:

First, send Wesley Johnson anywhere, for nothing, into a team’s cap room or a TPE. This creates a 5.6M TPE for LAC, and gives them roughly 8.2M in room under the hard cap. Now, they can move Jamal Crawford and Austin Rivers for Anthony and have the space to take back Carmelo’s salary without matching it dollar-for-dollar. Still, Rivers and Crawford make a combined $24.25M—125% of that is over 30 million, which means Carmelo wouldn’t be able to waive part of that trade kicker.

The outcome of this deal is the same as that of the Rivers/Crawford/Johnson for Anthony swap I outlined before—even in a direct trade with the Knicks, they’d set the deal up so that a TPE would be created for Wesley Johnson’s 5.6M salary.

So, we tried something, but it didn’t let Melo waive his bonus, so his salary is still giant, and it didn’t save the Clippers from sending out anything extra.

Let’s switch some stuff around and build something that makes him waive his bonus:

If the Clippers send Austin, Jamal, Wesley, and Alan Anderson to the Knicks, they can create an even bigger TPE and force Melo to decline his bonus. From New York’s perspective, this is simply one trade—Anthony goes out (24.5M) and Rivers, Crawford, Johnson, and Anderson come back (30.8M), which is a legal trade. From the Clippers’ perspective, it works as two trades:

Rivers (11M) goes to the Knicks for nothing, creating an 11M TPE, and

Crawford, Johnson, and Anderson (19.8M) go to the Knicks for Anthony (24.5M), which is a legal trade

Since the Clippers would be sending out $19,861,443 in salary in the Anthony trade, the max that they’d be able to bring back would be $24,926,804—that gives Carmelo only about $500,000 of his trade bonus, forcing him to waive the rest for the trade to go through. It actually increases the Clippers’ wiggle room under the hard cap, since they’re sending out more salary than they’re taking back, and it takes LAC out of taxpayer territory by a few million. Then, next season when they likely won’t be restricted by the hard cap, they’ll have that $11 million Rivers TPE to work with—we’ve seen how valuable those big exceptions have been for Cleveland in adding role players for nothing.

Just for fun, here’s an even crazier idea that could never happen:

Send Wesley, Jamal, Paul Pierce, and Anderson all out for Carmelo Anthony. This trade is the only way I can conceive to legally land Anthony on the Clippers and retain Austin Rivers for the bench. Paul Pierce serves the same function as Austin Rivers above—he goes out for a TPE to create enough room for the Clippers to fit Melo under the hard cap, while the same Crawford/Johnson/Anderson package is actually swapped for Melo. The Clippers’ total outgoing salary in this deal is $22.9 million, and Melo’s incoming salary is the same as above—$24.9. The Clippers’ 2.6 million of wiggle room under the hard cap shrinks to $600,000, but it’s all legal, and the Clippers keep Austin. They’d have to use that last shred of flexibility to sign a player (they’d only have 12, and teams are required to carry 13), and the Knicks would have to cut three guys (presumably, Anderson, Pierce, and one of their own benchwarmers).

The problem, of course, is that there’s no trade value in that Clippers package—this is definitely a scenario where they’d have to work with Toronto and Boston to remove protections, freeing up two future first-round picks to go to the Knicks in 2021 and 2023.

There you have it—two scenarios where the trade can be manipulated so that Melo is able to waive his no-trade clause. The first is obviously more practical—the Knicks are getting the same package based around Austin Rivers, but some cap gymnastics force Anthony to waive his bonus, lowering the incoming salary for the Clippers and helping them dodge the tax and have enough wiggle room to fill out the roster with buyout guys. The second one is a much more bare-bones approach—the trade is legal but the Knicks are getting nothing of value (except for draft considerations) and the Clippers would be walking the hard cap tight rope. Is it worth it, should the Knicks be willing? Of course. Would the Knicks be willing? Of course not.

If the Clippers are interested in the Melo sweepstakes, they’re playing the waiting game right now. Anthony says he wants to stay, but that he’ll waive his no-trade clause if the Knicks decide to blow up the team and rebuild—beyond that, rumors have been all over the place, and often conflicting. If Anthony decides to pull the trigger by saying he’d waive his no-trade clause, things could start moving very quickly. Until then, nothing is possible.

******

Yes, I've read your posts and they make no practical sense in how the NBA actually operates.

If the Knicks could trade Melo to anyone, then they'd have some leverage

If the Knicks could trade Melo and his contract wasn't such a massive cap hit, then they'd have some leverage

If the Knicks were not in a situation where Melo can simply say "I want this team and this team only, and I'm not going if Players X , Y and Z are gone" then they'd have some leverage.

The Knicks have ZERO LEVERAGE. They have the trade deadline, which forces teams to consider getting Melo there sooner than later to get the team to gel, and this might the Clips last chance with Chris Paul, that's operates as INCENTIVE, but it's not true LEVERAGE.

Why take Crawford? Who says Crawford is a good idea in the first place if the team had a choice. THIS TEAM HAS NO CHOICE. Melo doesn't want to be here. Jackson doesn't want him here. Do you want a sulking even more anti-team Melo to poison the next two years of Zinger's career? To absorb the kind of cap hit that any incoming team would need to take, and since the NTC limits what the incoming team has to give, the Knicks are almost certainly going to HAVE TO TAKE AT LEAST ONE BAD CONTRACT BACK.

I am not calling Crawford an effective player anymore or a good contract, I am saying he's not going to lock in and poison Zinger for sure the next two years. Also his cap hit is smaller, which makes it easier to possibly move in the future. It's unlikely, but at least Crawford can be moved to ANY TEAM and there are more salary matches that fit for him. Rivers is young. I don't think he's a good fit or a good contract either, but guess what? The Clippers only have X number of players can move and make the salary constraints work that aren't part of the core Melo would accept to go to in order to waive the NTC.

You keep saying, that's a horrible package, that's not good enough. Well "NOT GOOD ENOUGH" is what you get when you trade a player for pennies on the dollar. The Knicks franchise is like some out of towner in the wrong NY street late at night, Melo is the guy mugging him with the giant hand cannon in his face. That's what the NTC does, it is weapon the player can leverage to use against the franchise. You seem to think the Knicks are also as well armed in this situation. They are not.

Melo can be traded NOW for 15 cents on the dollar. He can be traded at the deadline for 10 cents on the dollar. He can be traded in the offseason for 5 cents on the dollar. The longer the Knicks wait, the uglier it gets. It doesn't go from good to ugly, it goes from ugly to uglier.

This is not a trade to get assets and a player bounty. This is a player and contract dump. You act like it's the former when the reality is it is the later. I cannot force you to face the reality, just like no one could force you to face the reality for years that Melo was never going to help the Knicks win playoff games and contend.

Once again, you spent a long post to agree with what I am already saying. Maybe this will help. I THINK THE KNICKS HAVE NO LEVERAGE! Thats why its stupid to trade him! And again. 'WHY TRADE HIM IF WE GET 15 CENTS ON THE DOLLAR'? Just because you think he is our biggest problem? he is NOT. Noah 17m sccrub. Rose, not a PG, team defense. Again, just say you dont like the guy or dont like they way the play with him on team. But dont defend some stupid trade that doesn't make us better, younger, gives us draft picks or releaves cap space.

If you think his value has peaked (even if it's lower than it used to be), you trade him. It's called cutting your losses. If you think his value will go up, you wait to trade him. That's too big a gamble IMO if there are any offers that get us a decent combination of cap space, picks, or prospects. (And if you think he's worth keeping at the salary of a superstar, then we won't even have anything to discuss.)

If you think its worth replacing the salary of a superstar(Our best player), with salary of a Crawford 14M 36 year old who has it guaranteed through 2019 btw) and a 11M overpaid bench player. than we are done here! The problem with fans is they convince themselves lateral moves will help an organazation. Just because they cant take losing. Sometimes its better to stay put and solve real problems.

To be fair it seems like Phil refuses to take back Jamal which is holding the deal up. Either a third team takes him (and sends something better back to the Knicks) or the Clippers will have to add Reddick and filler. Also we're definitely getting the 2021 and possibly their 2023. So you got to hope for a Brooklyn situation on those picks as well.

Good point. Hope your right. Have said many times that I would not mind a deal that brings in a young starter, cap space and draft picks. Don't think Austin rivers fits in the former. If his dad is willing to sign off, it has to be becasue there are deficiencies he cannot argue against. But maybe its because he feels he can be a starter. To me, any move not like one mentioned above, is just a lateral move made because Phil has a problem with Melo and not to improve Knicks. Hope we try to see how this team plays with Noah on bench and Rose in second unit before we trad Melo. Dont want to see another long losing streak years. Adn dont see Rivers or players of his caliber changing that. Even with KP.

HofstraBBall wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

HofstraBBall wrote:

TripleThreat wrote:

HofstraBBall wrote:
Addition? Crawford 14M 3 years left and 36 years old? Rivers 12M? Bench player. Redick 7M and FA at end of year?
No Leverage? Taht was my point for not trading him? But you think its a point for?
Accepting its time to start over? My point that its Phil's third try. Did you read my post?

http://www.clipsnation.com/2017/1/21/14344586/nba-trade-rumors-carmelo-anthony-clippers-knicks-bonus-jamal-crawford-austin-rivers

I’ve been asked a few times about Carmelo Anthony’s trade kicker this week. A lot of my first article is based around the idea that the Clippers don’t just have to take back Carmelo’s $24.5 million salary, but rather roughly $29.5 million as a result of Melo’s trade bonus. Here are the basics:

First of all, Anthony has a trade kicker worth 15% of his remaining contract. For 41 more games this year and 82 games each of the next two years, Anthony is scheduled to make $66,451,590. 15% of that salary is $9,967,739, and because the final year of Anthony’s deal is following an early termination option, that bonus must be split between the two guaranteed years of his contract. That extra $4,983,869 this year moves his salary up to $29,543,249. In order to match that salary, they’d have to send out about $23,554,600.

That one isn’t too rough—what’s rougher is the Clippers’ hard cap situation:

The Clippers are hard-capped at $117,287,000 because they used their full non-taxpayer mid-level exception this summer to sign Wesley Johnson. They currently have $2,546,968 in wiggle room underneath that hard cap. That means, essentially, that for any trade to be legal, the following must be true:

(incoming salary) - (outgoing salary) </= $2,546,968

By that formula, the Clippers must send out at least $26,996,281 in salary. It’s important to note that this is the far, far low end of the spectrum for outgoing salary: this places the Clippers at 100% of their hard cap allowance, without any room to sign players into their open roster spots. Depending on the deal, it’s likely that the Clippers will need at least some wiggle room for buyout additions.

So, pretty straightforward. Here’s what gets tricky: players are allowed to waive their trade bonuses under certain situations. It doesn’t really apply here, which is why I chose not to include it in the original article, but I want to talk about it now for two reasons: to clear up the most common question I’m getting on Melo trade math, and to raise an interesting asset management idea I reached following discussions on Melo’s trade kicker on twitter.

Let’s look at how the basic version of the trade goes down:

First, send Wesley Johnson anywhere, for nothing, into a team’s cap room or a TPE. This creates a 5.6M TPE for LAC, and gives them roughly 8.2M in room under the hard cap. Now, they can move Jamal Crawford and Austin Rivers for Anthony and have the space to take back Carmelo’s salary without matching it dollar-for-dollar. Still, Rivers and Crawford make a combined $24.25M—125% of that is over 30 million, which means Carmelo wouldn’t be able to waive part of that trade kicker.

The outcome of this deal is the same as that of the Rivers/Crawford/Johnson for Anthony swap I outlined before—even in a direct trade with the Knicks, they’d set the deal up so that a TPE would be created for Wesley Johnson’s 5.6M salary.

So, we tried something, but it didn’t let Melo waive his bonus, so his salary is still giant, and it didn’t save the Clippers from sending out anything extra.

Let’s switch some stuff around and build something that makes him waive his bonus:

If the Clippers send Austin, Jamal, Wesley, and Alan Anderson to the Knicks, they can create an even bigger TPE and force Melo to decline his bonus. From New York’s perspective, this is simply one trade—Anthony goes out (24.5M) and Rivers, Crawford, Johnson, and Anderson come back (30.8M), which is a legal trade. From the Clippers’ perspective, it works as two trades:

Rivers (11M) goes to the Knicks for nothing, creating an 11M TPE, and

Crawford, Johnson, and Anderson (19.8M) go to the Knicks for Anthony (24.5M), which is a legal trade

Since the Clippers would be sending out $19,861,443 in salary in the Anthony trade, the max that they’d be able to bring back would be $24,926,804—that gives Carmelo only about $500,000 of his trade bonus, forcing him to waive the rest for the trade to go through. It actually increases the Clippers’ wiggle room under the hard cap, since they’re sending out more salary than they’re taking back, and it takes LAC out of taxpayer territory by a few million. Then, next season when they likely won’t be restricted by the hard cap, they’ll have that $11 million Rivers TPE to work with—we’ve seen how valuable those big exceptions have been for Cleveland in adding role players for nothing.

Just for fun, here’s an even crazier idea that could never happen:

Send Wesley, Jamal, Paul Pierce, and Anderson all out for Carmelo Anthony. This trade is the only way I can conceive to legally land Anthony on the Clippers and retain Austin Rivers for the bench. Paul Pierce serves the same function as Austin Rivers above—he goes out for a TPE to create enough room for the Clippers to fit Melo under the hard cap, while the same Crawford/Johnson/Anderson package is actually swapped for Melo. The Clippers’ total outgoing salary in this deal is $22.9 million, and Melo’s incoming salary is the same as above—$24.9. The Clippers’ 2.6 million of wiggle room under the hard cap shrinks to $600,000, but it’s all legal, and the Clippers keep Austin. They’d have to use that last shred of flexibility to sign a player (they’d only have 12, and teams are required to carry 13), and the Knicks would have to cut three guys (presumably, Anderson, Pierce, and one of their own benchwarmers).

The problem, of course, is that there’s no trade value in that Clippers package—this is definitely a scenario where they’d have to work with Toronto and Boston to remove protections, freeing up two future first-round picks to go to the Knicks in 2021 and 2023.

There you have it—two scenarios where the trade can be manipulated so that Melo is able to waive his no-trade clause. The first is obviously more practical—the Knicks are getting the same package based around Austin Rivers, but some cap gymnastics force Anthony to waive his bonus, lowering the incoming salary for the Clippers and helping them dodge the tax and have enough wiggle room to fill out the roster with buyout guys. The second one is a much more bare-bones approach—the trade is legal but the Knicks are getting nothing of value (except for draft considerations) and the Clippers would be walking the hard cap tight rope. Is it worth it, should the Knicks be willing? Of course. Would the Knicks be willing? Of course not.

If the Clippers are interested in the Melo sweepstakes, they’re playing the waiting game right now. Anthony says he wants to stay, but that he’ll waive his no-trade clause if the Knicks decide to blow up the team and rebuild—beyond that, rumors have been all over the place, and often conflicting. If Anthony decides to pull the trigger by saying he’d waive his no-trade clause, things could start moving very quickly. Until then, nothing is possible.

******

Yes, I've read your posts and they make no practical sense in how the NBA actually operates.

If the Knicks could trade Melo to anyone, then they'd have some leverage

If the Knicks could trade Melo and his contract wasn't such a massive cap hit, then they'd have some leverage

If the Knicks were not in a situation where Melo can simply say "I want this team and this team only, and I'm not going if Players X , Y and Z are gone" then they'd have some leverage.

The Knicks have ZERO LEVERAGE. They have the trade deadline, which forces teams to consider getting Melo there sooner than later to get the team to gel, and this might the Clips last chance with Chris Paul, that's operates as INCENTIVE, but it's not true LEVERAGE.

Why take Crawford? Who says Crawford is a good idea in the first place if the team had a choice. THIS TEAM HAS NO CHOICE. Melo doesn't want to be here. Jackson doesn't want him here. Do you want a sulking even more anti-team Melo to poison the next two years of Zinger's career? To absorb the kind of cap hit that any incoming team would need to take, and since the NTC limits what the incoming team has to give, the Knicks are almost certainly going to HAVE TO TAKE AT LEAST ONE BAD CONTRACT BACK.

I am not calling Crawford an effective player anymore or a good contract, I am saying he's not going to lock in and poison Zinger for sure the next two years. Also his cap hit is smaller, which makes it easier to possibly move in the future. It's unlikely, but at least Crawford can be moved to ANY TEAM and there are more salary matches that fit for him. Rivers is young. I don't think he's a good fit or a good contract either, but guess what? The Clippers only have X number of players can move and make the salary constraints work that aren't part of the core Melo would accept to go to in order to waive the NTC.

You keep saying, that's a horrible package, that's not good enough. Well "NOT GOOD ENOUGH" is what you get when you trade a player for pennies on the dollar. The Knicks franchise is like some out of towner in the wrong NY street late at night, Melo is the guy mugging him with the giant hand cannon in his face. That's what the NTC does, it is weapon the player can leverage to use against the franchise. You seem to think the Knicks are also as well armed in this situation. They are not.

Melo can be traded NOW for 15 cents on the dollar. He can be traded at the deadline for 10 cents on the dollar. He can be traded in the offseason for 5 cents on the dollar. The longer the Knicks wait, the uglier it gets. It doesn't go from good to ugly, it goes from ugly to uglier.

This is not a trade to get assets and a player bounty. This is a player and contract dump. You act like it's the former when the reality is it is the later. I cannot force you to face the reality, just like no one could force you to face the reality for years that Melo was never going to help the Knicks win playoff games and contend.

Once again, you spent a long post to agree with what I am already saying. Maybe this will help. I THINK THE KNICKS HAVE NO LEVERAGE! Thats why its stupid to trade him! And again. 'WHY TRADE HIM IF WE GET 15 CENTS ON THE DOLLAR'? Just because you think he is our biggest problem? he is NOT. Noah 17m sccrub. Rose, not a PG, team defense. Again, just say you dont like the guy or dont like they way the play with him on team. But dont defend some stupid trade that doesn't make us better, younger, gives us draft picks or releaves cap space.

If you think his value has peaked (even if it's lower than it used to be), you trade him. It's called cutting your losses. If you think his value will go up, you wait to trade him. That's too big a gamble IMO if there are any offers that get us a decent combination of cap space, picks, or prospects. (And if you think he's worth keeping at the salary of a superstar, then we won't even have anything to discuss.)

If you think its worth replacing the salary of a superstar(Our best player), with salary of a Crawford 14M 36 year old who has it guaranteed through 2019 btw) and a 11M overpaid bench player. than we are done here! The problem with fans is they convince themselves lateral moves will help an organazation. Just because they cant take losing. Sometimes its better to stay put and solve real problems.

I wouldn't call him a superstar or even an all-star but no, I don't think that trade is worthwhile. It's a really bad trade for us.
We have to get at least one of these three for me to even think about it: cap space, pick(s), or younger player(s) on reasonable contract(s). But I'm not expecting to get 2 or 3 of those 3 things in a trade.

wargames wrote:Orlando is saying they want a proven scorer and would be willing to trade one of their big man(with an emphasis on Ibaka or Vucevic) I think they might be the third team willing to take Jamal or Reddick (depending on who gets sent out). If that is so I wonder if Phil flips whoever he gets now. It's a interesting problem to have. Either of those guys could get the Knicks some draft picks or could be a part of the Knicks future core.

If we assume that Rivers, Crawford, and Brice Johnson are the returning players, then i can see the Nets being interested in Crawford. They have no incentive to tank and Crawford provides scoring and vet leadership for a couple of seasons. LA could send a 2018 2nd round pick for Nets absorbing Crawford's contract. So Nets land an extra asset and make their team better now. Win-win for them. We would end up with Rivers, Johnson, and LA 2021 1st round pick. Not a great haul, but it is what it is. 2 prospects, 1 future 1st round pick, and a ton of extra cap space.

If we wanted to work on an even more complex deal, i could see us sending Lee to LAC in addition to Melo, and finding a team to flip Redick to for a 1st rounder. OKC has cap space and could really use Redick. They could send back Morrow (who is expiring) to us in addition to a 1st round pick this season. LAC also send Diamond Stone to OKC to balance out contracts.

So it looks like this:

Knicks receive:
Rivers
Johnson
Morrow
OKC 2017 1st rd pick
LAC 2021 1st rd pick

Clippers receive:
Melo
Lee

Nets receive:
Crawford
LAC 2018 2nd rd pick

Thunder receive:
Redick
Stone

We need to be creative and make sure we end up with 1 or more 1st round picks, Rivers, Johnson, and extra cap space for it to make sense. It's still 50 cents on the dollar but could be much worse.

Knixkik wrote:

wargames wrote:Orlando is saying they want a proven scorer and would be willing to trade one of their big man(with an emphasis on Ibaka or Vucevic) I think they might be the third team willing to take Jamal or Reddick (depending on who gets sent out). If that is so I wonder if Phil flips whoever he gets now. It's a interesting problem to have. Either of those guys could get the Knicks some draft picks or could be a part of the Knicks future core.

If we assume that Rivers, Crawford, and Brice Johnson are the returning players, then i can see the Nets being interested in Crawford. They have no incentive to tank and Crawford provides scoring and vet leadership for a couple of seasons. LA could send a 2018 2nd round pick for Nets absorbing Crawford's contract. So Nets land an extra asset and make their team better now. Win-win for them. We would end up with Rivers, Johnson, and LA 2021 1st round pick. Not a great haul, but it is what it is. 2 prospects, 1 future 1st round pick, and a ton of extra cap space.

If we wanted to work on an even more complex deal, i could see us sending Lee to LAC in addition to Melo, and finding a team to flip Redick to for a 1st rounder. OKC has cap space and could really use Redick. They could send back Morrow (who is expiring) to us in addition to a 1st round pick this season. LAC also send Diamond Stone to OKC to balance out contracts.

So it looks like this:

Knicks receive:
Rivers
Johnson
Morrow
OKC 2017 1st rd pick
LAC 2021 1st rd pick

Clippers receive:
Melo
Lee

Nets receive:
Crawford
LAC 2018 2nd rd pick

Thunder receive:
Redick
Stone

We need to be creative and make sure we end up with 1 or more 1st round picks, Rivers, Johnson, and extra cap space for it to make sense. It's still 50 cents on the dollar but could be much worse.

Good job putting scenerio together. Hopefully this is closer to what will take place. Although I believe Phil likes Rivers and Crawford.

Bonn1997 wrote:

HofstraBBall wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

HofstraBBall wrote:

TripleThreat wrote:

HofstraBBall wrote:
Addition? Crawford 14M 3 years left and 36 years old? Rivers 12M? Bench player. Redick 7M and FA at end of year?
No Leverage? Taht was my point for not trading him? But you think its a point for?
Accepting its time to start over? My point that its Phil's third try. Did you read my post?

http://www.clipsnation.com/2017/1/21/14344586/nba-trade-rumors-carmelo-anthony-clippers-knicks-bonus-jamal-crawford-austin-rivers

I’ve been asked a few times about Carmelo Anthony’s trade kicker this week. A lot of my first article is based around the idea that the Clippers don’t just have to take back Carmelo’s $24.5 million salary, but rather roughly $29.5 million as a result of Melo’s trade bonus. Here are the basics:

First of all, Anthony has a trade kicker worth 15% of his remaining contract. For 41 more games this year and 82 games each of the next two years, Anthony is scheduled to make $66,451,590. 15% of that salary is $9,967,739, and because the final year of Anthony’s deal is following an early termination option, that bonus must be split between the two guaranteed years of his contract. That extra $4,983,869 this year moves his salary up to $29,543,249. In order to match that salary, they’d have to send out about $23,554,600.

That one isn’t too rough—what’s rougher is the Clippers’ hard cap situation:

The Clippers are hard-capped at $117,287,000 because they used their full non-taxpayer mid-level exception this summer to sign Wesley Johnson. They currently have $2,546,968 in wiggle room underneath that hard cap. That means, essentially, that for any trade to be legal, the following must be true:

(incoming salary) - (outgoing salary) </= $2,546,968

By that formula, the Clippers must send out at least $26,996,281 in salary. It’s important to note that this is the far, far low end of the spectrum for outgoing salary: this places the Clippers at 100% of their hard cap allowance, without any room to sign players into their open roster spots. Depending on the deal, it’s likely that the Clippers will need at least some wiggle room for buyout additions.

So, pretty straightforward. Here’s what gets tricky: players are allowed to waive their trade bonuses under certain situations. It doesn’t really apply here, which is why I chose not to include it in the original article, but I want to talk about it now for two reasons: to clear up the most common question I’m getting on Melo trade math, and to raise an interesting asset management idea I reached following discussions on Melo’s trade kicker on twitter.

Let’s look at how the basic version of the trade goes down:

First, send Wesley Johnson anywhere, for nothing, into a team’s cap room or a TPE. This creates a 5.6M TPE for LAC, and gives them roughly 8.2M in room under the hard cap. Now, they can move Jamal Crawford and Austin Rivers for Anthony and have the space to take back Carmelo’s salary without matching it dollar-for-dollar. Still, Rivers and Crawford make a combined $24.25M—125% of that is over 30 million, which means Carmelo wouldn’t be able to waive part of that trade kicker.

The outcome of this deal is the same as that of the Rivers/Crawford/Johnson for Anthony swap I outlined before—even in a direct trade with the Knicks, they’d set the deal up so that a TPE would be created for Wesley Johnson’s 5.6M salary.

So, we tried something, but it didn’t let Melo waive his bonus, so his salary is still giant, and it didn’t save the Clippers from sending out anything extra.

Let’s switch some stuff around and build something that makes him waive his bonus:

If the Clippers send Austin, Jamal, Wesley, and Alan Anderson to the Knicks, they can create an even bigger TPE and force Melo to decline his bonus. From New York’s perspective, this is simply one trade—Anthony goes out (24.5M) and Rivers, Crawford, Johnson, and Anderson come back (30.8M), which is a legal trade. From the Clippers’ perspective, it works as two trades:

Rivers (11M) goes to the Knicks for nothing, creating an 11M TPE, and

Crawford, Johnson, and Anderson (19.8M) go to the Knicks for Anthony (24.5M), which is a legal trade

Since the Clippers would be sending out $19,861,443 in salary in the Anthony trade, the max that they’d be able to bring back would be $24,926,804—that gives Carmelo only about $500,000 of his trade bonus, forcing him to waive the rest for the trade to go through. It actually increases the Clippers’ wiggle room under the hard cap, since they’re sending out more salary than they’re taking back, and it takes LAC out of taxpayer territory by a few million. Then, next season when they likely won’t be restricted by the hard cap, they’ll have that $11 million Rivers TPE to work with—we’ve seen how valuable those big exceptions have been for Cleveland in adding role players for nothing.

Just for fun, here’s an even crazier idea that could never happen:

Send Wesley, Jamal, Paul Pierce, and Anderson all out for Carmelo Anthony. This trade is the only way I can conceive to legally land Anthony on the Clippers and retain Austin Rivers for the bench. Paul Pierce serves the same function as Austin Rivers above—he goes out for a TPE to create enough room for the Clippers to fit Melo under the hard cap, while the same Crawford/Johnson/Anderson package is actually swapped for Melo. The Clippers’ total outgoing salary in this deal is $22.9 million, and Melo’s incoming salary is the same as above—$24.9. The Clippers’ 2.6 million of wiggle room under the hard cap shrinks to $600,000, but it’s all legal, and the Clippers keep Austin. They’d have to use that last shred of flexibility to sign a player (they’d only have 12, and teams are required to carry 13), and the Knicks would have to cut three guys (presumably, Anderson, Pierce, and one of their own benchwarmers).

The problem, of course, is that there’s no trade value in that Clippers package—this is definitely a scenario where they’d have to work with Toronto and Boston to remove protections, freeing up two future first-round picks to go to the Knicks in 2021 and 2023.

There you have it—two scenarios where the trade can be manipulated so that Melo is able to waive his no-trade clause. The first is obviously more practical—the Knicks are getting the same package based around Austin Rivers, but some cap gymnastics force Anthony to waive his bonus, lowering the incoming salary for the Clippers and helping them dodge the tax and have enough wiggle room to fill out the roster with buyout guys. The second one is a much more bare-bones approach—the trade is legal but the Knicks are getting nothing of value (except for draft considerations) and the Clippers would be walking the hard cap tight rope. Is it worth it, should the Knicks be willing? Of course. Would the Knicks be willing? Of course not.

If the Clippers are interested in the Melo sweepstakes, they’re playing the waiting game right now. Anthony says he wants to stay, but that he’ll waive his no-trade clause if the Knicks decide to blow up the team and rebuild—beyond that, rumors have been all over the place, and often conflicting. If Anthony decides to pull the trigger by saying he’d waive his no-trade clause, things could start moving very quickly. Until then, nothing is possible.

******

Yes, I've read your posts and they make no practical sense in how the NBA actually operates.

If the Knicks could trade Melo to anyone, then they'd have some leverage

If the Knicks could trade Melo and his contract wasn't such a massive cap hit, then they'd have some leverage

If the Knicks were not in a situation where Melo can simply say "I want this team and this team only, and I'm not going if Players X , Y and Z are gone" then they'd have some leverage.

The Knicks have ZERO LEVERAGE. They have the trade deadline, which forces teams to consider getting Melo there sooner than later to get the team to gel, and this might the Clips last chance with Chris Paul, that's operates as INCENTIVE, but it's not true LEVERAGE.

Why take Crawford? Who says Crawford is a good idea in the first place if the team had a choice. THIS TEAM HAS NO CHOICE. Melo doesn't want to be here. Jackson doesn't want him here. Do you want a sulking even more anti-team Melo to poison the next two years of Zinger's career? To absorb the kind of cap hit that any incoming team would need to take, and since the NTC limits what the incoming team has to give, the Knicks are almost certainly going to HAVE TO TAKE AT LEAST ONE BAD CONTRACT BACK.

I am not calling Crawford an effective player anymore or a good contract, I am saying he's not going to lock in and poison Zinger for sure the next two years. Also his cap hit is smaller, which makes it easier to possibly move in the future. It's unlikely, but at least Crawford can be moved to ANY TEAM and there are more salary matches that fit for him. Rivers is young. I don't think he's a good fit or a good contract either, but guess what? The Clippers only have X number of players can move and make the salary constraints work that aren't part of the core Melo would accept to go to in order to waive the NTC.

You keep saying, that's a horrible package, that's not good enough. Well "NOT GOOD ENOUGH" is what you get when you trade a player for pennies on the dollar. The Knicks franchise is like some out of towner in the wrong NY street late at night, Melo is the guy mugging him with the giant hand cannon in his face. That's what the NTC does, it is weapon the player can leverage to use against the franchise. You seem to think the Knicks are also as well armed in this situation. They are not.

Melo can be traded NOW for 15 cents on the dollar. He can be traded at the deadline for 10 cents on the dollar. He can be traded in the offseason for 5 cents on the dollar. The longer the Knicks wait, the uglier it gets. It doesn't go from good to ugly, it goes from ugly to uglier.

This is not a trade to get assets and a player bounty. This is a player and contract dump. You act like it's the former when the reality is it is the later. I cannot force you to face the reality, just like no one could force you to face the reality for years that Melo was never going to help the Knicks win playoff games and contend.

Once again, you spent a long post to agree with what I am already saying. Maybe this will help. I THINK THE KNICKS HAVE NO LEVERAGE! Thats why its stupid to trade him! And again. 'WHY TRADE HIM IF WE GET 15 CENTS ON THE DOLLAR'? Just because you think he is our biggest problem? he is NOT. Noah 17m sccrub. Rose, not a PG, team defense. Again, just say you dont like the guy or dont like they way the play with him on team. But dont defend some stupid trade that doesn't make us better, younger, gives us draft picks or releaves cap space.

If you think his value has peaked (even if it's lower than it used to be), you trade him. It's called cutting your losses. If you think his value will go up, you wait to trade him. That's too big a gamble IMO if there are any offers that get us a decent combination of cap space, picks, or prospects. (And if you think he's worth keeping at the salary of a superstar, then we won't even have anything to discuss.)

If you think its worth replacing the salary of a superstar(Our best player), with salary of a Crawford 14M 36 year old who has it guaranteed through 2019 btw) and a 11M overpaid bench player. than we are done here! The problem with fans is they convince themselves lateral moves will help an organazation. Just because they cant take losing. Sometimes its better to stay put and solve real problems.

I wouldn't call him a superstar or even an all-star but no, I don't think that trade is worthwhile. It's a really bad trade for us.
We have to get at least one of these three for me to even think about it: cap space, pick(s), or younger player(s) on reasonable contract(s). But I'm not expecting to get 2 or 3 of those 3 things in a trade.

Would agree, not "Superstar". Was quoting other poster. All Star? Is starting to play like one, once again. Agree with you on not expecting much. Reason why I would prefer to stay pat and make some changes with guys we have.

HofstraBBall wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

HofstraBBall wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

HofstraBBall wrote:

TripleThreat wrote:

HofstraBBall wrote:
Addition? Crawford 14M 3 years left and 36 years old? Rivers 12M? Bench player. Redick 7M and FA at end of year?
No Leverage? Taht was my point for not trading him? But you think its a point for?
Accepting its time to start over? My point that its Phil's third try. Did you read my post?

http://www.clipsnation.com/2017/1/21/14344586/nba-trade-rumors-carmelo-anthony-clippers-knicks-bonus-jamal-crawford-austin-rivers

I’ve been asked a few times about Carmelo Anthony’s trade kicker this week. A lot of my first article is based around the idea that the Clippers don’t just have to take back Carmelo’s $24.5 million salary, but rather roughly $29.5 million as a result of Melo’s trade bonus. Here are the basics:

First of all, Anthony has a trade kicker worth 15% of his remaining contract. For 41 more games this year and 82 games each of the next two years, Anthony is scheduled to make $66,451,590. 15% of that salary is $9,967,739, and because the final year of Anthony’s deal is following an early termination option, that bonus must be split between the two guaranteed years of his contract. That extra $4,983,869 this year moves his salary up to $29,543,249. In order to match that salary, they’d have to send out about $23,554,600.

That one isn’t too rough—what’s rougher is the Clippers’ hard cap situation:

The Clippers are hard-capped at $117,287,000 because they used their full non-taxpayer mid-level exception this summer to sign Wesley Johnson. They currently have $2,546,968 in wiggle room underneath that hard cap. That means, essentially, that for any trade to be legal, the following must be true:

(incoming salary) - (outgoing salary) </= $2,546,968

By that formula, the Clippers must send out at least $26,996,281 in salary. It’s important to note that this is the far, far low end of the spectrum for outgoing salary: this places the Clippers at 100% of their hard cap allowance, without any room to sign players into their open roster spots. Depending on the deal, it’s likely that the Clippers will need at least some wiggle room for buyout additions.

So, pretty straightforward. Here’s what gets tricky: players are allowed to waive their trade bonuses under certain situations. It doesn’t really apply here, which is why I chose not to include it in the original article, but I want to talk about it now for two reasons: to clear up the most common question I’m getting on Melo trade math, and to raise an interesting asset management idea I reached following discussions on Melo’s trade kicker on twitter.

Let’s look at how the basic version of the trade goes down:

First, send Wesley Johnson anywhere, for nothing, into a team’s cap room or a TPE. This creates a 5.6M TPE for LAC, and gives them roughly 8.2M in room under the hard cap. Now, they can move Jamal Crawford and Austin Rivers for Anthony and have the space to take back Carmelo’s salary without matching it dollar-for-dollar. Still, Rivers and Crawford make a combined $24.25M—125% of that is over 30 million, which means Carmelo wouldn’t be able to waive part of that trade kicker.

The outcome of this deal is the same as that of the Rivers/Crawford/Johnson for Anthony swap I outlined before—even in a direct trade with the Knicks, they’d set the deal up so that a TPE would be created for Wesley Johnson’s 5.6M salary.

So, we tried something, but it didn’t let Melo waive his bonus, so his salary is still giant, and it didn’t save the Clippers from sending out anything extra.

Let’s switch some stuff around and build something that makes him waive his bonus:

If the Clippers send Austin, Jamal, Wesley, and Alan Anderson to the Knicks, they can create an even bigger TPE and force Melo to decline his bonus. From New York’s perspective, this is simply one trade—Anthony goes out (24.5M) and Rivers, Crawford, Johnson, and Anderson come back (30.8M), which is a legal trade. From the Clippers’ perspective, it works as two trades:

Rivers (11M) goes to the Knicks for nothing, creating an 11M TPE, and

Crawford, Johnson, and Anderson (19.8M) go to the Knicks for Anthony (24.5M), which is a legal trade

Since the Clippers would be sending out $19,861,443 in salary in the Anthony trade, the max that they’d be able to bring back would be $24,926,804—that gives Carmelo only about $500,000 of his trade bonus, forcing him to waive the rest for the trade to go through. It actually increases the Clippers’ wiggle room under the hard cap, since they’re sending out more salary than they’re taking back, and it takes LAC out of taxpayer territory by a few million. Then, next season when they likely won’t be restricted by the hard cap, they’ll have that $11 million Rivers TPE to work with—we’ve seen how valuable those big exceptions have been for Cleveland in adding role players for nothing.

Just for fun, here’s an even crazier idea that could never happen:

Send Wesley, Jamal, Paul Pierce, and Anderson all out for Carmelo Anthony. This trade is the only way I can conceive to legally land Anthony on the Clippers and retain Austin Rivers for the bench. Paul Pierce serves the same function as Austin Rivers above—he goes out for a TPE to create enough room for the Clippers to fit Melo under the hard cap, while the same Crawford/Johnson/Anderson package is actually swapped for Melo. The Clippers’ total outgoing salary in this deal is $22.9 million, and Melo’s incoming salary is the same as above—$24.9. The Clippers’ 2.6 million of wiggle room under the hard cap shrinks to $600,000, but it’s all legal, and the Clippers keep Austin. They’d have to use that last shred of flexibility to sign a player (they’d only have 12, and teams are required to carry 13), and the Knicks would have to cut three guys (presumably, Anderson, Pierce, and one of their own benchwarmers).

The problem, of course, is that there’s no trade value in that Clippers package—this is definitely a scenario where they’d have to work with Toronto and Boston to remove protections, freeing up two future first-round picks to go to the Knicks in 2021 and 2023.

There you have it—two scenarios where the trade can be manipulated so that Melo is able to waive his no-trade clause. The first is obviously more practical—the Knicks are getting the same package based around Austin Rivers, but some cap gymnastics force Anthony to waive his bonus, lowering the incoming salary for the Clippers and helping them dodge the tax and have enough wiggle room to fill out the roster with buyout guys. The second one is a much more bare-bones approach—the trade is legal but the Knicks are getting nothing of value (except for draft considerations) and the Clippers would be walking the hard cap tight rope. Is it worth it, should the Knicks be willing? Of course. Would the Knicks be willing? Of course not.

If the Clippers are interested in the Melo sweepstakes, they’re playing the waiting game right now. Anthony says he wants to stay, but that he’ll waive his no-trade clause if the Knicks decide to blow up the team and rebuild—beyond that, rumors have been all over the place, and often conflicting. If Anthony decides to pull the trigger by saying he’d waive his no-trade clause, things could start moving very quickly. Until then, nothing is possible.

******

Yes, I've read your posts and they make no practical sense in how the NBA actually operates.

If the Knicks could trade Melo to anyone, then they'd have some leverage

If the Knicks could trade Melo and his contract wasn't such a massive cap hit, then they'd have some leverage

If the Knicks were not in a situation where Melo can simply say "I want this team and this team only, and I'm not going if Players X , Y and Z are gone" then they'd have some leverage.

The Knicks have ZERO LEVERAGE. They have the trade deadline, which forces teams to consider getting Melo there sooner than later to get the team to gel, and this might the Clips last chance with Chris Paul, that's operates as INCENTIVE, but it's not true LEVERAGE.

Why take Crawford? Who says Crawford is a good idea in the first place if the team had a choice. THIS TEAM HAS NO CHOICE. Melo doesn't want to be here. Jackson doesn't want him here. Do you want a sulking even more anti-team Melo to poison the next two years of Zinger's career? To absorb the kind of cap hit that any incoming team would need to take, and since the NTC limits what the incoming team has to give, the Knicks are almost certainly going to HAVE TO TAKE AT LEAST ONE BAD CONTRACT BACK.

I am not calling Crawford an effective player anymore or a good contract, I am saying he's not going to lock in and poison Zinger for sure the next two years. Also his cap hit is smaller, which makes it easier to possibly move in the future. It's unlikely, but at least Crawford can be moved to ANY TEAM and there are more salary matches that fit for him. Rivers is young. I don't think he's a good fit or a good contract either, but guess what? The Clippers only have X number of players can move and make the salary constraints work that aren't part of the core Melo would accept to go to in order to waive the NTC.

You keep saying, that's a horrible package, that's not good enough. Well "NOT GOOD ENOUGH" is what you get when you trade a player for pennies on the dollar. The Knicks franchise is like some out of towner in the wrong NY street late at night, Melo is the guy mugging him with the giant hand cannon in his face. That's what the NTC does, it is weapon the player can leverage to use against the franchise. You seem to think the Knicks are also as well armed in this situation. They are not.

Melo can be traded NOW for 15 cents on the dollar. He can be traded at the deadline for 10 cents on the dollar. He can be traded in the offseason for 5 cents on the dollar. The longer the Knicks wait, the uglier it gets. It doesn't go from good to ugly, it goes from ugly to uglier.

This is not a trade to get assets and a player bounty. This is a player and contract dump. You act like it's the former when the reality is it is the later. I cannot force you to face the reality, just like no one could force you to face the reality for years that Melo was never going to help the Knicks win playoff games and contend.

Once again, you spent a long post to agree with what I am already saying. Maybe this will help. I THINK THE KNICKS HAVE NO LEVERAGE! Thats why its stupid to trade him! And again. 'WHY TRADE HIM IF WE GET 15 CENTS ON THE DOLLAR'? Just because you think he is our biggest problem? he is NOT. Noah 17m sccrub. Rose, not a PG, team defense. Again, just say you dont like the guy or dont like they way the play with him on team. But dont defend some stupid trade that doesn't make us better, younger, gives us draft picks or releaves cap space.

If you think his value has peaked (even if it's lower than it used to be), you trade him. It's called cutting your losses. If you think his value will go up, you wait to trade him. That's too big a gamble IMO if there are any offers that get us a decent combination of cap space, picks, or prospects. (And if you think he's worth keeping at the salary of a superstar, then we won't even have anything to discuss.)

If you think its worth replacing the salary of a superstar(Our best player), with salary of a Crawford 14M 36 year old who has it guaranteed through 2019 btw) and a 11M overpaid bench player. than we are done here! The problem with fans is they convince themselves lateral moves will help an organazation. Just because they cant take losing. Sometimes its better to stay put and solve real problems.

I wouldn't call him a superstar or even an all-star but no, I don't think that trade is worthwhile. It's a really bad trade for us.
We have to get at least one of these three for me to even think about it: cap space, pick(s), or younger player(s) on reasonable contract(s). But I'm not expecting to get 2 or 3 of those 3 things in a trade.

Would agree, not "Superstar". Was quoting other poster. All Star? Is starting to play like one, once again. Agree with you on not expecting much. Reason why I would prefer to stay pat and make some changes with guys we have.

I agree about staying pat unless the Celtics get involved. Revisit around the draft and see what you can get. The Clips don't have much. Any opinion pieces I have read, local and national all say the Clip trade would be horrible for the Knicks.

smackeddog wrote:I don't hate Melo, but he needs to go for his own sake (why waste the end of your career here losing) and our sake- we can't build a contender in the time frame he has before he gets too old.

The damage is done at this point now the trade talks are out there- it's just creating a horrific atmosphere around the team.

Am I okay with Redick (he would have to be traded because he doesn't want to be here), Crawford (lord no) and Rivers? It's a huge anti climax. I could get to feeling better about it depending on whether you can get a nice pick for Redick and if you can get rid of crawford. Likely we also include Lee.

Lee and Melo for a possible late first and Rivers sounds like a joke (especially when you look at what Boston could have given us if they'd wanted Melo), but if it's the only deal on the table then what choice do you have? Take comfort in losing so badly we get a top pick in the draft.

The guy I badly want rid of is Rose- I can't stand him and I think he's a huge part of the poisoning of the team. Get him out of here.

Papabear Says

We haven't had a contender in years so what make you think we will get one now? We chase players away.