Carmelo Anthony

[bobatundi]

Ok, so much of the speculation with an Anthony trade revolves around where he wants to be long-term, right? Well how about this.

Dallas trades Caron and Haywood to the Nuggets for Anthony.

If you're Denver, you do it to get something instead of nothing. You now have a legit C, and you have a solid if not spectacular player in Butler that you can choose to re-sign, S&T, or just let him expire.

For the Mavs: you're trading away Caron, who is expiring and seems unlikely to be re-signed, and Haywood, who is getting paid a lot of money to be the third-best C on our team, and is likely to become more and more disgruntled as the season goes along. I mean really, he gets a start and can't even log more minutes than Mahinmi?

So swapping 'Melo for Caron in our starting lineup, and replacing Haywood's limited production with Mahinmi, could put this team over the top (if they're not already there). Then, if we win a championship, maybe Carmelo decides he likes that and wants to do it some more; or, if he's insisting on leaving for New York, we get (at worst) a $17MM trade exception and a future pick out of it by doing a S&T, and could get some talent back as well (Felton, anyone?).