Carmelo Anthony insists he does not have a bag packed just in case, at a moment’s notice, he has to fly off to a new job in New York or someplace.
“Nah, all my stuff is in my closet,” he said Tuesday. “I’m cool.”
In fact, Melo has become a high-profile symbol of his team, much of which could be elsewhere by this time next year. So the NBA season that begins with tonight’s opener against Utah looks like a last hurrah for the current roster. And with Anthony on the trading block, the changes could start anytime.
How does an alleged playoff contender deal with such uncertainty?
“Just don’t think about it,” Anthony said on the eve of the opener. “I was always told, if it’s not harming you, then you don’t need to think about it, you don’t need to worry about it. I don’t need to worry about that stuff right now. It’s easy for me. It’s basketball.”
So the Nuggets have spent training camp and the preseason preparing for a season around a leading scorer who could be gone anytime and around several other veteran players who could follow him out the door shortly.
“Whatever happens, I think we’re going to be a good basketball team,” said coach George Karl, who doesn’t find any basketball issue particularly daunting after spending much of the past year battling cancer.
“Somehow, some way, if the worst thing in my mind that could happen is Melo would be traded, we might be able to make it a strength,” he said. “I think it’s at least a 50-50 chance that we could turn it into a good. It might take some time. There might be some ugly games along the way.”
Underlying this Melodrama is the NBA’s pending labor dispute and Nuggets owner E. Stanley Kroenke’s emergence as a leading hawk trying to lower league costs.
Actually, Kroenke’s son, Josh, will eventually own the Nuggets, a nicety required by his father’s purchase of a majority interest in the NFL’s St. Louis Rams. Not surprisingly, the team’s financial strategy does not seem to have changed with the pending handoff from father to son.
Because the Kroenkes don’t say much about their plans, one must glean this strategy from their behavior. Depending on how various options are resolved, Anthony, Kenyon Martin, Nene, Chauncey Billups and J.R. Smith all could be free agents next summer. The decision to allow all of them to enter the final year of their contracts suggests the Kroenkes’ top priority now is having the flexibility to build a roster under the new rules that follow the coming labor dispute.
In the meantime, the Melo watch pitches and rolls, depending on the latest rumor. The fact that a Melo trade might come anytime — and might not — complicates Karl’s job considerably. He must deploy a Melo-centric offense until he’s traded and then have a Plan B ready to go the next night. When I asked Karl how he would deal with such a transition in the midst of the season, he shrugged.
“That’s a good question,” he said. “I can’t deny I was kind of rocked by his news this summer. I didn’t see that coming.”
That was the news that Anthony would not sign the three-year, $65 million contract extension, opening the door to a trade that would bring something in exchange before he can walk away as a free agent next summer.
“My (Continental Basketball Association) experience helps me,” Karl said. “I’ve had five guys traded or gone to Europe or picked up by an NBA team in five days. You’ve got to be ready to go to work.”
The NBA’s recent publicity offensive did not exactly increase Anthony’s incentive to sign a contract extension that would facilitate a trade. Conventional wisdom suggested he would do so because the extension he can sign now is more lucrative than the extension he’ll be able to sign after the labor dispute is resolved.
But the association’s confirmation that it wants a hard salary cap and cuts of 30 percent to 40 percent in player salaries means old contracts are just as likely to be cut as new ones, which is what happened following the NHL lockout of 2004-05. In that case, it won’t matter whether Melo signs now or later. The reduction would be the same.
“If it happens, it’s going to happen,” Anthony said of a trade. “I’m not even worrying about it.”
Barring a deal between now and 7 tonight, the Nuggets who open the season against the Jazz will be familiar. How long a last hurrah they get is anybody’s guess.
Dave Krieger: 303-954-5297, dkrieger@denverpost.com or
