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Sources told Yahoo! Sports on Monday that there is “no chance” the Knicks trade free agent-to-be Carmelo Anthony by the Feb. 20 deadline.
Let’s face the facts: even with Anthony, the Knicks are a mediocre basketball team in a horrendous Atlantic Division.
Since training camp opened, there have been five significant trades involving 10 teams, 19 players and seven draft picks.
The big winners have been a team that got rid of the highest scorer among the traded players and a team that acquired a player who has yet to play. The big loser has been a team that swears by analytics.
Another way to look at it is like this: The biggest trades thus far have been the ones that haven’t been made – Omer Asik for Thaddeus Young, Carmelo Anthony for Blake Griffin, Pau Gasol for just about anybody.
And with six weeks until the trading deadline, there will be plenty more trades that are and aren’t made.
But we can’t grade those. So we graded the ones that have been made.
As an action packed weekend of basketball comes to a close, here’s the good, bad and the ugly of what took place.
Short, but not that sweet is the best way to describe Rudy Gay’s stint in Toronto.
On Sunday evening his time as a Raptor officially came to an end.
Rudy Gay has been traded to the Sacramento Kings along with Quincy Acy and Aaron Gray. The Toronto Raptors will receive Greivis Vasquez, John Salmons, Patrick Patterson and Chuck Hayes, reports Adrian Wojnarowski and Marc Spears of Yahoo.
The past month has been rough on both Gay and the Raptors, as tension began to build. It got so bad that fans and media began to turn on the starting small forward.
Usually in these circumstances, players avoid speaking about the manner on social media, however, a couple of guys took to Twitter.
That trade tho wow
— John Lucas III (@Luke1luk) December 9, 2013
Nice trade for the Kings
— Brandon Rush (@BRush_25) December 9, 2013
Perhaps Rush is right, the Kings gave up three expiring contracts and the contract of Chuck Hayes that’s worth over $6 million. Right now this is an unpopular move in Sacramento, but if Gay can adapt to his new role, good things can happen.
In Toronto, fans are cheering as the high volume shooter is gone. The Raptors also got what they wanted out of the trade – more flexibility to land a 2014 lottery draft pick.
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Brett Poirier is a contributor to Sheridan Hoops. Follow @BrettNBA
There is, of course, the old adage that titles are not won in July (the Heat in 2010 being the clear exception) but several moves were made on Tuesday that could quietly alter the regular season standings out west next season. We’ve also seen shooters get large contracts this week like, it seems, never before. Those are the main two storylines from the July 2, but there’s a whole lot to get to before we all take a nice break for the holiday weekend.
