Carmelo Anthony says nice things about Denver, but does that change anything?

Denver has a good basketball team right now. We were reminded of that last night when they hung with the Lakers in a scoring fest, got good play off the bench (I could swear I saw Al Harrington on help defense) and played enough defense late to hand Los Angeles its first loss. The capacity crowd at the Pepsi Center ate it up. They want to believe.

But the cloud of Carmleo Anthony’s trade demands loomed over the night. It looms over everything with the Nuggets.

Anthony keeps saying the right things publicly, and that includes Thursday. That doesn’t really change the bottom line, the underlying issues are the same, but he says the right things.

For one, he tried to diffuse the talk around Chris Paul’s toast back in July at Anthony’s wedding a toast that included the thought of Anthony and CP3 joining Amar’e Stoudemire in New York. From Chris Tomasson at FanHouse:

“It was at my wedding,’' Anthony said. “Everybody was having fun. The Miami Heat thing was the hot topic at that point in time. There were a lot of guys, a lot of players there, just laughing and joking about it. It is what it is. ... It wasn’t set up. It wasn’t staged or anything like that. It was just everybody was having a good time laughing and joking.’'

Anthony publically is saying that he wants to keep his options open and Denver is one of those options.

“I think as far as my situation goes or anything, I think (VP of basketball operations) Masai (Ujiri) and (team president) Josh (Kroenke) and myself, we have great communication,’' Anthony said. “The lines are open right now between us. If anything is happening, if anything is being said, we sit down and talk about it. So that’s a good thing. Then I can be able to go to them or they come to me. Being that they’re the leaders of this organization and we need to sit down and talk it out.



“What’s going on in my head, they know. They know what’s going on in my head. So, as far as any of that stuff goes, we’re all on the same page.’'

Anthony even asked Kobe Bryant for advice, as Kobe told FanHouse.

“I said, ‘Make sure you’re sure about what you want to do,’'' Bryant told FanHouse on Thursday before his Lakers were to face Anthony’s Nuggets at the Pepsi Center. “That’s the only advice I gave him.’'

The hype around ‘Melo is going to get ratcheted up in the next week, as the Nuggets host the New York Knicks next Tuesday. You can bet through it all Anthony will keep saying the right things, he’s practiced at it.

But this was never about what Anthony said publicly — the pressure has come from his agent and the people at CAA. It has been done through back channels. And that has not changed either. They continue to say — other teams around the league certainly believe — that Anthony is not going to sign that three-year, $65 million extension with Denver. That Denver knows it and that they will have to move him or risk being Cleveland and Toronto.

Ujiri and Kronke have been the ones to move slowly, patiently on this. Hoping they can change Anthony’s mind, waiting for better offers to come in. Denver is not moving quickly on this, not yet anyway.

Nothing has really changed. There has been — and there will be in the next week — a lot of talk about Anthony in Denver, Anthony on the trade block. But the song remains the same. The extension sits unsigned. Anthony speaks of loving Denver but keeping his options open. Behind the scenes his people push for a trade to New York or Chicago. Denver’s front office is patient and cautious. All the way things have been for months.

Things are going to have to change at some point, maybe after Dec. 15 with signings from this summer can be moved. But right now, it’s status quo.