Get your stars, hot fresh, right out of the oven.  The NBA is letting their stars dictate their landing spots, and with super-teams the in thing, trades like the Carmelo one are just going to become even more rampant. Unless, something is done to stop it.

SCOTT JACOBS

Vince Carter may or may not have started this trend, but he’s the one I personally remember clamoring for change — and getting it.  He’s the first superstar that comes to mind who may have changed the game without actually realizing it.  For Air Canada as  he was once known, may have started the obnoxious NBA ritual of dictating where a superstar player wants to go– whether his current and usually first team likes it or not.

But this story isn’t about Vince Carter, one of the more over-rated players of this or any era for that matter.  It’s about a league that needs to make change of it’s own happen, or it risk becoming — gasp — Major League Baseball, where only the mega markets can truly compete with the smaller markets striking it rich every so often.

The NBA needs to be very wary of this change that has taken over the league, and Carmelo going to the Knicks (more on that in a moment) needs to be the moment where the NBA’s collective genuises put their two cents together to figure out how to stop superstar players from becoming dictators on their NBA team.

Everyone’s talking about Carmelo Anthony, the superstar going to the Knicks.  I think Melo, the guy who didn’t win squat in Denver, despite being surrounded with a core group of good players (including the Likes of A.I., Chauncey Billups, Nene, etc.) forcing his way out of the Denver organization sucks.  It reeks of a slap in the face to all those loyal Nuggets fans who sat and watched as their teams floundered year in and year out, before his arrival.

Then when the former Syracuse star arrived, he brought hope and promise, and Denver quickly built itself into a perennial playoff team, but never truly a championship contender.

Anthony is a free agent at the end of the year (well, not anymore considering he’s a lock to sign a 3 year mega-deal with the Knicks) and he had the right to bolt the Rockies as soon as Denver’s bizzare season was over. Fine.  But to put the Nuggets in this drab all year long, and not even giving them options, because he just had to go to New York and no where else is just plain nauseating.

What have you done Miami?

If this is the new NBA I don’t like it.  Not one bit.  I don’t want a league that’s the have everythings and the have squats.  Are we looking at an NBA where only a handful of teams can truly win anymore?  Is the era of building a team dead, replaced by the ideology that you should “mutilate your roster, add a star through free agency, and then some other star will force his way out of town to pair with your star so they can get a third star to come leave his city too.”

Is that it?  Is that the new ‘plan.’

I’m not a fan.  While the league execs are probably cheering high above in their ivy towers that the Knicks are now must watch the rest of this year and beyond, this really begs the question of ‘just who is running these teams?’  Is it the owners and GM’s?  Or the star(s)?

Donnie Walsh oddly enough is probably going to lose his job as GM despite the fact that he took a horrific team and turned them into a winner. Why?  Because he didn’t see eye to eye with crazy owner James Dolan, who must be freaking the you know know what out right now after landing a second star for his beloved Garden.

People will bash LeBron, but at least he had the decency to play out his contract and then move on elsewhere.  What Carmelo did in turning this season into a daily circus for the Nuggets was unfair and quite frankly, pathetic.

So now we turn to the Knicks.  Will it work?  It won’t this season.  They have three guys, and that’s it.  And unlike Miami they have upwards of 30 games to figure it out before they make the playoffs.  Their depth is well who are we kidding, they no longer have any depth, and remember, Mike D’Antoni has still never taken an NBA team to the finals.  Nor does he believe in having a bench.  Which works great, cause they have Landry Fields and no one else now.

People forget that Nash and Stoudemire were surrounded by some really good players in Phoenix and never won a championship. Never even made the Finals.  That was a cohesive unit, one that could shoot, was freakishly athletic, and could practically run you off the court.  While this new Knicks team has power and scoring, is Chauncey Billups really the guy to run a 7 seconds or less type of offense?

It will be exciting, no doubt, but if the Knicks were bad on D before, just wait till you see them now.  Amare is a shotblocker and a below average defender.  Anthony has never really shown much of an interest besides scoring.  Amare and Carmelo both need the ball, and both want to be the hero. What are they going to do, pick and roll the league to death?

And while Amare is a really good player, he’s not a superstar.  Why?  Because after watching his entire career in Phoenix, he was built for the regular season and seemed to always disappear in the post-season.  But that was with a team built around him in the middle.  The new Knicks, well, I’m curious to see how they plan on piecing these guys together.

Sometimes as sports fans, we get starry eyed by superstars, and fail to see the bigger picture — that teams win championships.  Two stars a championship team does not make.  Especially two guys who don’t necessarily complement each other’s style, unless Anthony plans on becoming Steve Nash overnight.

Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t.

But if karma is a bitch, as LeBron once tweeted, than the Thunder are going to have an NBA dynasty on their hands, because they’ve built their team the right way, the old fashioned way, through time, draft picks, and growth.

As for the Nuggets, well, Knicks West has a long way to go to regain relevance, and the league seems to be just fine with that.

Photo: Reuters

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