Carmelo Anthony has 30 million reasons to remain with the New York Knicks after he becomes an unrestricted free agent this summer. But if the Knicks don’t have his word that he’ll re-sign with them for five years at a max salary, can they afford to take the risk that he might leave? That is the question owner Jim Dolan and his tight-lipped lieutenants are asking themselves as New York struggles through the first half of the season, entering tonight’s game against
This is the final edition of the MVP Rankings that will be published from our corporate headquarters in New York this month. As I promised in the preseason, I am heading to Las Vegas to gamble on basketball and write about it on this site, diary style. Wish me luck. I know, I know … they build great big hotels in Vegas because of folks who head out to the desert trying to get rich quick. Myself? Not really trying to get
Mitch Kupchak I have already made my thoughts known on the Luog Deng-Andrew Bynum trade in a column, the gist of whih is that the big loser in this deal was the Lakers. Go ahead and click through and give it a read as you listen to this audio from the NBA’s Sirius-XM radio channel, in which I go into further detail about why Mitch Kupchak blew a golden opportunity to set the Lakers up for having
Well, Lakers fans, you get to keep staring at Pau Gasol and watch him age before your eyes — until the trade deadline, that is. OK, maybe a couple months longer. And the rebuilding plan that coincides with Kobe Bryant’s two-year contract extension? Don’t expect the Lakers to be flooded with max players. They still need to stay under the luxury tax line for two seasons to avoid the dreaded repeater tax, and it doesn’t look like this season will be
Dennis Rodman appears to have made good on his promise to field a team of ex-NBA players for his trip to North Korea to play basketball in honor of Kim Jong-Un’s birthday, from which we can surmise that we now know exactly which ex-players will do absolutely anything to make money. Even if it means traveling to the country with the worst human rights record on the planet. Rodman’s team includes Kenny Anderson, Vin Baker, Doug Christie, Craig Hodges, Clifford Robinson
The Pau Gasol-for-Andrew Bynum trade talks appear to be dormant but not dead. The Lakers would like to get another worthy asset thrown into in the deal … but so would the Cavs. And you know what? I have to side with the Cavs and general manager Chris Grant on this one. By taking Gasol’s $19.3 million salary off the Lakers’ books, they will drop Los Angels below the luxury tax threshold, saving the Buss family in the area of $20 million.
Word on the street today is louder than ever that Carmelo Anthony wants out of New York. How do we know this? Marc Berman and Frank Isola are writing it hard in the New York tabloids, and both of those fellas are as plugged into their team as any beat writers in North America. You can bristle at Isola’s anti-Berman’s tweets – a constant source of amusement for anyone who follows the Knicks – and you can bristle at Berman’s wardrobe, which
The poor puppy pictured to your left was named “Molly.” She didn’t make it through 2013, and she has not yet been replaced. You have to grieve a dead pet for a certain amount of time, and the proper mourning period has not yet passed. So as 2014 begins, we bid a hearty good riddance to 2013. Aside from the expiration of Molly (she was not a puppy, but passed away at the young age of 8), think of all the