So after Carmelo Anthony hijacked the Nuggets’ season last year and held them hostage until they traded him, and not just anywhere, but specifically to the team he desired, the New York Knicks, the owners... well, they got a little miffed. You’ve been insulted twice by the power of players over the people who pay their contracts, you tend to get a little irritated. So as part of the latest proposal that was chopped down by the players upon which they summarily disbanded their union and filed suit against the league, the owners had proposed a ban on “extend-and-trade” deals. Melo wants to go get his money in New York in free agency? Fine. But you can no longer extend a player using the advantages inherent in such deals and then move him, giving him the best of both worlds. Cake and eat it, etc.
They call it “the Melo Rule.”
And as Alan Hahn of Newsday reports, Melo thinks that’s pretty funny. And he decided to troll them a little bit.
via Newsday|Knicks item.
“Make your petty rules against me, mortals! I shall live on forever and haunt your children’s children’s children with my constant threat of playing where I want to on the contract owed to me by the team that was forced to trade me after a six-month nightmare that brought such dread horrors as ‘Lionel Bienvenue!’ The day is mine!”
Or something.
Or, in other words, “Come at me, bro.”
Today is Day 143 of the NBA Lockout.