The 2013-2014 season hasn’t even started yet and people are already talking about what kind of super-teams can be formed for the following season. So I thought, what the heck, why not join in with the discussion? One of the more interesting topics is what Knicks star Carmelo Anthony will do next season. There have been rumors all over the place, some saying that he will go join the Lakers with Kobe. The Knicks have already announced that if he stays, he’ll be able to do what Dwayne Wade did with the Heat and “choose” his teammates, so why not just stay? Well, we’ll see if that’s even possible for the Knicks if they don’t want to completely break the bank.
Some of the biggest names to possibly be on the market after this coming season are the Big 3 in Miami: Wade, Chris Bosh, and LeBron James. There’s no telling whether they’ll stay put or move on to a different team. They might even all end up on different teams. It seems rather unlikely though that any of those guys would join the Knicks next season. There hasn’t even been a dumb rumor about it yet, which means there’s just no chance at this point. The Knicks may only have about $27 million in guaranteed money for the 14-15 season, but that doesn’t include Anthony’s contract as well as Amar’e Stoudemire’s contract. They’re both owed over $23 million each that season, but they have the early termination option (but to be honest, if Stoudemire opts out of his contract, he’d be a moron. There’s no way he’d get more than a quarter of that salary from any other team in the league). So assuming those guys both stay with the Knicks, they’ll already be $74 million, way over the cap.
Along with Stoudemire and Anthony, their roster would still include J.R. Smith, Tyson Chandler, Raymond Felton, Pablo Prigioni, and Tim Hardaway, Jr. So that means seven guys make up $74 million in cap space…which means they don’t have much to work with. Andrea Bargnani also has $11.5 million in his one year left, but he also has the early termination offer. But if he doesn’t take that, then they’ll be at $85 million right there. Granted, that’s still a very good team, and a definite contender if everyone can stay healthy, but this is without them even adding anyone. With some stud players out there on the market though, it puts the Knicks in the situation to do some sign and trade deals.
The only way that they’ll have the cap room for Melo’s dream team is if they trade some people first. The greatest thing they could ever do is unload Stoudemire’s awful contract, but I doubt any team is stupid enough to take that. They could trade Felton or even J.R. Smith since they already have Iman Shumpert. Signing a top free agent is going to require a lot of money, so dealing those two guys would at least give them a little room to move. There’s no possible way that they would be able to stay under the actual salary cap, so they’ll need to pay a lot of money in luxury taxes either way.
But let’s remember, the super-team doesn’t have to come after next year. The Knicks said anyway that he would get to pick his teammates after the 2015 season and not the 2014 season, so it looks like he’ll have to miss out on the Heat Big Three there. There are still some really good names in the class of 2015, but not quite as nice as the year before. The Knicks are locked into their current roster for both next year and the following year, but if Melo is given enough leeway to pick his team, they could still really do some damage.
