It’s hard not to take these things personally. Carmelo Anthony wants out, and as I write this, the Nuggets are attempting to negotiate the details of a complicated multi-team trade, the essence of which can be boiled down to seven little wordsMelo doesn’t want to live here anymore.
The Nuggets offered him all the money they’re allowed to offer under NBA rules — a three-year, $65 million extension. And he didn’t even blink.
In other words, it’s not about the money. It’s not even remotely about the money.
It’s that he doesn’t want to live or play here anymore, in the place where you and I gladly live and play for approximately — rounding off — $65 million less than $65 million. And so the Nuggets must trade him because, if they don’t, Anthony will be a free agent at the end of the season and just walk away. We’ve seen this story before: The Nuggets will get LeBroned. And it’s hello, Cleveland!
Of course you take it personally, particularly if you’re a fan. That’s because fans, by definition, take everything personally. It’s the entire point of being a fan — the willingness to have the balance of your life upset because people you don’t actually know win or lose a game in which you’re not actually participating.
Did you see the Bing Crosby story? Crosby was part owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates when they were playing the Yankees in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series. Crosby was afraid he’d jinx the team by watching the game, so, as anyone might, he went to Paris and listened to the game on radio from there. But he also hired a team to tape the TV broadcast, using the latest in 1960s technology, so that, if the Pirates won, he could watch the game later.
The Pirates, of course, did win in what may be the greatest World Series game ever played. The story gets better. The tape of the TV broadcast was lost to neglect. But someone just found the Crosby video — the only known copy of the complete game. It is not unlike Indiana Jones finding the Ark of the Covenant, but while wearing a Pirates baseball cap.
That’s what it means to be a fan. We watch the game on TV and believe that the outcome can be decided based on which side of the couch we sit on — or whether we go to Paris for the pate and crackerjacks.
It’s not logical. But it is personal.
What I mean is, I have a friend who’s a diehard Rockies fan who told me the other day, for maybe the 10th time this season, “the Rockies are dead to me.” He paused and said: “Unless they start winning again.”
If you want to understand the world of talk radio — and the need to demonize the guys/gals who play on the other side, and also those who play on your side but who’ve had a bad day — listen to sports-talk radio, where it all began.
For a fan, the Anthony affair offers many dimensions to the story. Melo rescued Nuggets fans from years of ineptitude. Now he threatens to send the team back where he found it. This is a betrayal of the first order. And it’s worse still. He wants to leave for the big stage of New York (OK, Brooklyn, via New Jersey), which reinforces the idea — heard, as far as I know, only in Denver — of Denver as cowtown.
And, of course, we can blame his wife, La La — the Yoko of the story — because if there’s one thing we know for sure, it’s that no one named La La is content to live in Denver.
And we can also blame LeBron James and Super Friends who went to South Beach to form their own NBA powerhouse, making unfriended Melo jealous enough to jump too.
In most cases, the idea of shaping one’s own destiny would seem to be as American as $6 beer. But that concept stops at the arena door — where selfless loyalty is valued above all, unless, of course, it isn’t.
Take the case of local hero Chauncey Billups, who grew up in Park Hill, went to CU and rooted for the home team. When he was drafted by the Boston Celtics, he was expected to bleed Celtic green, which he did, until they traded him. He was traded again. And again. And again. And again.
Once, early in Billups’ career, he was traded to the Nuggets, who dumped him the very next year. Of course he came back, helping lead the Nuggets to the Western finals and became the good-news story of Denver sports. And that’s how it will end, unless he’s sent off again.
Melo wants to see what the world is like beyond the Pepsi Center and doesn’t seem fazed what that might mean to the Nuggets or to their fans. It sounds unforgivable.
But what if, say, a year ago, the Cleveland Cavaliers had decided they couldn’t sign James and offered to trade him for Anthony? Would you have worried about loyalty to Melo, about him having to go live and play in Cleveland? Or would you have made the trade in a Rocky Mountain minute?
As Dylan wrote, it’s life, and life only. Just don’t try telling that to a Nuggets fan.
Mike Littwin writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-5428 or mlittwin@denverpost.com
