The rush to force a trade from Carmelo’s perspective, of course, involves the expiration of the current collective bargaining agreement and fears from his camp that, under the new system that is expected to be much more restrictive than the current deal, he’ll never see the kind of money he has on the table right now.
Let’s recall the 2004-05 NHL lockout and one of the most controversial issues that led to the entire season being cancelled: the league’s call for a 24 percent rollback on current contracts. The reason for the rollback was to re-set the value structure of current contracts to fit into the hard cap system they wanted to put in place. In other words, no grandfathering. Everyone was going to see the belt tighten, not just the unfortunate ones who were free agents.
With the NBA looking for a similar system, I’ve heard from a couple of executives around the NBA that there absolutely has been talk about issuing a rollback on current contracts. It may not be as dramatic as the 24 percent that the NHL imposed on the union, but it’s absolutely going to be in play.
So even if Carmelo signs an extension now for $65M, he is not likely to see all of it on the other side of this lockout anyway. Would he still see more of it? Possibly, because there will likely be a reduction in the cap on max contracts in the next CBA. But how dramatic of a difference are we talking at this point?…
The Nets played this well. Carmelo wanted New York and realized the Nuggets weren’t going to accommodate him with a trip to the Garden. The Nets are the next best thing.
And if he does go there, does that make them better than the Knicks?
