MELO OUT, AND MORE NBA TALES
Big Apple tabloids won’t have Carmelo Anthony to kick around any more while Norm Powell’s Raptors prepare for camp in Victoria.
NEW YORK— After scoring more than 10,000 points for five coaches over seven seasons without all that much to show for it, Carmelo Anthony is finally leaving New York.
The New York Knicks on Saturday agreed to trade Anthony, a 10-time NBA all-star and one of the league’s great offensive players, to the Oklahoma City Thunder in exchange for Enes Kanter, Doug McDermott and a second-round draft pick, according to a league official briefed on the negotiations.
The deal, completed just two days before the start of Knicks training camp, will allow the 33-year-old Anthony to join forces in Oklahoma City with two other marquee players — Russell Westbrook, the NBA’s reigning most valuable player, and Paul George, a four-time all-star — as the Thunder begin a wildly ambitious bid to challenge the supremacy of the Golden State Warriors, who have claimed two of the last three NBA championships and are the strong favourites to win another next season.
At the same time, the Knicks can finally close the chapter on Anthony’s turbulent tenure in New York and try to move on without him. Anthony, who desperately wanted out of New York, had been determined to join the Houston Rockets. But as training camp neared, he agreed to waive his no-trade clause for a couple of more teams, including the Thunder.
It will not take Anthony long to see his old team again: The Knicks are scheduled to play their season opener in Oklahoma City on Oct. 19.
The trade comes after a tumultuous summer for the Knicks, who fired Phil Jackson after a disastrous tenure as team president and hired Scott Perry as the new general manager.
It became increasingly clear that Perry, along with Steve Mills, who was promoted to team president in the wake of Jackson’s departure, wanted to move on from Anthony.
Both Perry and Mills have repeatedly expressed their desire to commit the struggling Knicks to a rebuilding plan that would emphasize youth and defence. Although they did not say so directly, that description seemed to leave no role for the 6-foot-8-inch Anthony, who has never been much of a defender and is fairly old by basketball standards.
With Saturday’s deal, the Knicks signalled the continuation of a youth movement centred on Kristaps Porzingis, their 22-year-old power for- ward. But their defence remains in some doubt.
Kanter, a 25-year-old centre from Turkey, averaged 14.3 points in 21.3 minutes a game for the Thunder last season. But Billy Donovan, coach of the Thunder, had such little faith in Kanter’s defensive abilities that he could not keep him on the court in a playoff series against the Rockets last season.
In May, Kanter made international headlines when he was detained in Romania after the Turkish government cancelled his travel documents. Kanter, who was later allowed to return to the United States, has been an outspoken critic of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
McDermott, a 25-year-old forward, averaged 9 points a game last season.
The Thunder will be Anthony’s third NBA team in a professional career that began in 2003, when he was selected by the Denver Nuggets with the No. 3 pick in the draft.