New York Knicks need to make a difficult decision regarding their star player Carmelo Anthony. The Knicks need him as the leading scorer in News York, but his high salary is a burden for the Knicks to add more star players in their roster.
The Knicks has many reasons to trade Anthony to other team. According to New York Times, he has no appreciation to Knicks president Phil Jackson'd strategy of triangle offense. The strategy which has brought eleven NBA championship for Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers.
Other reason is that although he is a leading scorer for the Knicks, but he practically has no interest to play defense, which made him a burden in defensive end. As a result, the Knicks now sit at the bottom half of the entire NBA team in defensive efficiency, allowing opponent to score 108.1 points in 100 possesion.
The result of the Knicks games showed his high scoring does not make the team win the game. Knicks lost 6 of their last 10 games, and in all of the losses Anthony led the team in scoring with more than 20 points. According to CBS Sports, in the last five games the 32-year old forward scores an average of 30 points with 47 percent field goal accuracy and 41 percent from behind the arc, while the Knicks lost three games.
Holding a no-trade clause in his sleeve, Anthony may choose his destination and veto the trade to the team he does not want to. He is one of the two players who currently have a clause in their contract, the other player is Dallas Mavericks forward Dirk Nowitzki. The no-trade clause is a privilege, because NBA only allow players to have such if he has played for minimum eight seasons, and playing four seasons in one team consecutively.
Therefore, decision to either keep Anthony or trade him is the toughest decision for New York Knicks now. Watch the discussion in the ESPN Sport Center about possible trade for Anthony to Clippers below:
