Skipping the first stretch, because it is what it is there and I respect the stance. I don't see you as a Melo hater for being skeptical of where Melo goes from here. But I would caution a rush to judgement about his shooting numbers because it was evident for a large chunk of this season that his surgically repaired knee was not fully recovered. Taking the season into 10 game chunks his FG% goes 40, 42, 46, 47%. So while his season average is low, he's trending up and looks like he could easily reach career averages and has actually shot a FG% above any season in NY since the 20th game of the season. That's a significant and sustained production. That isn't to say he won't regress, but the claim that his production is trending in the wrong direction would be one I disagree with and at a minimum suggest you hold judgement on until we get a larger sample size to work from.
As far as saying 28 million dollars is not a good value and can't be; this is really just an opinion based comment. I base contract value on not only production for the team but also percentage of cap required. Kobe's 28 million dollars against a 70 million dollar cap has a larger impact than Melo's 28 million against a 108 million dollar projected cap (and I repeat, the trend is that projections have been too low even before the tv deal). That's what I'm speaking about in terms of value. Melo giving a team 20, 6 and 3 on 45% from the field is not a bad value when his contract leaves the necessary room to add multiple large contracts and if you consider guys like Derozan are looking at 25 million dollar per year offers, it's even more debatable that Melo's contract won't have value. Also you're mistaken on his age, he'll be 33 turning 34 in the last season of his deal unless I'm mistaken which does make some difference compared to 35 turning 36.
Edit: Here's a sign of the types of players commanding 25 million a season with larger incremental raises
Lakers To Offer DeMar DeRozan Max Contract - RealGM Wiretap
The new normal is gonna be nuts.
Reasonable minds can disagree about these points. I don't think Carmelo Anthony, who is going to be 32 THIS season, can possibly give you value on a 28 million dollar deal three and four years from now. I see your point that "if Derozan is getting 28 million, well that will be worse than melo" - and yes, right now, melo deserves more money. But Demar Derozon, whose game I hate - is having his best year yet, getting to the line 8+ times per game. It is likely he will improve, or at worst - hold this level over the next four years.
It is UNLIKELY that Melo can hold his current ability/playing over the next 4 years. So you're basically asking about a declining commodity, and hoping it will decline LESS.
There will ALWAYS be "worse contracts" - for me the question can't be about comparing us to other team's mistakes... we want other teams to compare themselves to our CORRECT choices. I doubt the spurs make a move, and think "well at least it won't be as bad as Eric Gordon's deal" Yanno?
On the contrary, you've misread my point. If we're talking legitimate contenders in this league there are three; GS, San Antonio and Cleveland...but I'm speaking on the idea that the Knicks are a "fringe playoff" team as a way to prop up trading Melo. Re-read my post, I don't say a word about contenders in fact I'm saying close to the opposite. "The entire conference is a fringe playoff team with how much parity there is" and "We're literally one big run away from talking about home court advantage to start the post season" are the two comments I want to key on. Dropping Cleveland from the equation, every team in the East is a bad losing streak away from losing their playoff spot and every team is a nice winning streak away from fighting for home court advantage in the first round. There's no fill-in-the-blanks beliefs there. First quote means that there's not much gap between the top teams in the East (besides Cleveland) and the "fringe" teams. Second comment is just a fact, if we run off 5 or 6, we could quickly be fighting for the 4th seed rather than the 8th seed.
So when you say that the 6th team and the 10th team don't have much difference, I think you're being too conservative. There's not much difference from 3-10 and the Raptors aren't a scary playoff team either, so you could extrapolate that 2-10 in the East are all weak enough for a team to get hot and make a run up the rankings. I repeat,
none of this has to do with the Knicks contending, it just means that during this soft stretch of schedule they could easily play themselves into a comfortable playoff position where the idea that "they're playing this well and still fighting to get in" could evaporate. That's a pure hypothetical, but it's not unrealistic. Not with the home court, weak schedule and improved play/coaching.
