If the New York Knicks do, in fact, trade Carmelo Anthony before next season begins, it won’t be to the Miami Heat.
Mostly because the Heat have no interest in entering the Melo sweepstakes that aren’t, per Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald:
One person in touch with the Heat said he does not expect a Heat pursuit of Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony, who’s available via trade.
This is more noteworthy for what it says about Anthony’s market than anything else. Of course the Heat don’t want to trade for Anthony. Their window to win with Goran Dragic and Hassan Whiteside is now, but they don’t need Melo’s contractual bloat when someone like Danilo Gallinari and Gordon Hayward are better fits for their success by committee.
And this, in turn, begs an interesting question: Who will want to trade for Anthony?
The Los Angeles Clippers, sure. But the trade packages they can offer the New York Knicks are, for the incumbent’s purposes, beyond laughable. At the same time, any other suitor you can come up with—Boston Celtics, Cleveland Cavaliers, Toronto Raptors, etc.—either isn’t in a position to offer much better deals and/or doesn’t have a real need for a soon-to-be 33-year-old Anthony who isn’t going to give them much, or anything, on the defensive end.
Hence the Knicks’ dilemma: How do they move Melo while extracting real value out of his next team? More likely than not, they can’t, so they’ll have to decide whether to trade him for the sake of change or keep him in tow out of good business principles.
