Should The Sacramento Kings Go After Carmelo Anthony?

I should probably start with article with a big disclaimer: I don’t expect the Sacramento Kings to actually be able to pry Carmelo Anthony away from the New York Knicks. What I do anticipate (and hope for) is that they at least try to.

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It’s not as much that I’m a massive Melo fan (although I do enjoy watching him play basketball very much) that I would like Sacramento to take a stab at acquiring Carmelo though. It’s more for the sake of DeMarcus Cousins and the Kings than anything else.

Boogie is a great talent–quite possibly the best center in the entire NBA–but he alone is not enough to even make the playoffs, much less win a championship. Even with the solid cast of characters Vlade Divac gathered around Boogie in the offseason, this team will likely struggle to crack the top eight teams in the Western Conference.

That’s not because the bench isn’t there (it is) or because Cousins isn’t good enough (he’s fantastic). It’s because he has no second star at his side. Rudy Gay is a good player and likely a very good third banana but he’s just not up to the task of being the second-best player on a championship team.

Dec 27, 2014; Sacramento, CA, USA; New York Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony (7) shoots the ball as Sacramento Kings forward Rudy Gay (8) defends in the first quarter at Sleep Train Arena. Mandatory Credit: Cary Edmondson-USA TODAY Sports

Carmelo Anthony definitely is. He may not be quite elite enough to lead that charge (due to the weakness of many of his supporting casts we may never know for sure) but pairing him with Boogie Cousins would make a duo more than strong enough to instantly challenge some of the best teams in the NBA.

There are of course several obstacles standing in the way of Melo becoming a King. First and foremost, the Knicks still don’t want to deal him anywhere. Second: Melo has a no-trade clause in his newest deal with the Knicks. If he doesn’t want to leave, they can’t make him.

Finally, I doubt the Kings have enough trade chips to acquire Melo without dealing Boogie, which defeats the purpose.

Fortunately, I don’t believe any of those obstacles are completely insurmountable. If losing persists in New York even though Melo is healthy he could very well force a deal to happen, and I doubt the Knicks would refuse and keep him around for three more unhappy years.

Also, I don’t see Melo refusing to be dealt to Sacramento via his no-trade clause. A completely dominating young center and a dynamic, prolific scorer worked out pretty damn well for the Lakers a few years back–the Shaq and Kobe comparisons with these two are pretty legitimate.

The trade chips thing is a huge problem, though. The Kings are short on draft picks after that awful J.J. Hickson deal and the Nik Stauskas salary dump, and draft picks are what the Knicks would need after losing several of their own and needing to rebuild fast.

There are no shortage of talented young players on the Kings, but Rudy Gay would almost certainly be a part of any Melo to Sacramento deal to help match salaries. Other young talents like Ben McLemore, Willie Cauley-Stein, Seth Curry and Quincy Acy could also find themselves in New York should this trade I’m proposing ever become more than just another of my crazy ideas.

The deal would have to be for simply a mix of those players and Gay–right now the Kings are in draft pick hell thanks to the two trades I mentioned earlier. Unless they made a separate deal or got a third team involved Vlade would have essentially no way to send picks to the Knicks.

So is one of those packages enticing enough to get Phil Jackson to send over his superstar? Probably not. But you never know, and there’s a whole lot that could happen between now and the trade deadline. Maybe Melo and the Knicks get along great and he never gets dealt at all.

But maybe, just maybe, Vlade Divac finds a way to go get a scoring star in Carmelo Anthony and pair him with his dominant center in DeMarcus Cousins. Look no further than the Houston Rockets for another example of how well that can go–James Harden and Dwight Howard seem to work pretty damn well together.

If Vlade has just a few more tricks left up his sleeve and manages to bring Melo–or a different star–to town soon it will certainly indicate a new era of Kings basketball. Sacramento is one more star away from being something very special–and dangerous–in the NBA.

Plus there’s no way in hell Boogie would want out when he’s got a few title runs staring him in the face. Let’s make it happen, Vlade.

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