At a press conference to introduce his new GM, Masai Ujiri, the Nuggets’ soon-to-be owner Josh Kroenke said that the recent meeting with Carmelo Anthony went rather well.
Ujiri and Josh Kroenke, recently elevated to team president and awaiting the “owner” title, have good relationships with Anthony. They both spoke Tuesday at a news conference at the Pepsi Center to officially announce Ujiri’s hiring.
Kroenke took aim at a recent column on Yahoo.com that cited sources who detailed a deteriorating relationship between team executives and Anthony’s representation, headed by agent Leon Rose.
“Anything that has been said is either someone trying to manipulate the situation behind the scenes or other motives that are unknown at this point,” Kroenke said. “But Melo and his representation have been great to us.
“I think he knows he can come to me as an individual. We have that amount of respect that we can talk about things openly in a noncombative way. So anything that has been stated from sources behind sources . . . All of our talks have been extremely cordial. I haven’t had a negative conversation with Carmelo Anthony since I’ve known him, and that goes back to my time as a college basketball player. I don’t have a bad word to say about Melo as a person.”
The aforementioned column was written by Adrian Wojnarowski and he paints a very different picture of how the meeting went:
Denver was furnished with a short list of teams and told to get to work. Yes, this is how William Wesley and Leon Rose of CAA work now, thick with threats and ultimatums and a swagger suggesting that the sport belongs to them. After Anthony told owner-in-waiting Josh Kroenke that he still wanted out of Denver during a Sunday meeting, the Nuggets appear done trying to sell their All-Star forward on a contract extension.
This wasn’t a productive, nor particularly pleasant, meeting and multiple sources said it could turn out to be the point of no return for Anthony and the organization. Sources insist it’s no longer a matter of if the Nuggets trade Anthony, but when, where and for whom he’s traded for.
So what’s the disconnect? Well, one of four things may be happening: 1) Wojnarowski is getting bad information from his sources, 2) Wojnarowski has an axe to grind and is fabricating the story, 3) the Nuggets are spinning the situation, or 4) the Nuggets are clueless.
Wojnarowski is a pro, so I think we can cross #2 off of his list, despite the fact that he infuses some commentary into his stories. The Nuggets insist there are sources that are trying to manipulate the situation, though Wojnarowski cites ‘multiple sources’ in his story. At least two people told him that the meeting could represent the ‘point of no return’ for the two parties.
The Nuggets would benefit if they paint a pretty picture of their relationship with Carmelo, as it would help them get a better deal if other teams aren’t sure if Anthony is trying to force his way out of Denver. I suspect that the real issue here is some combination of #1, #3 and #4. It’s entirely possible that Wojnarowski has sources that are trying to create a media dialogue, and that the Nuggets didn’t think the meeting went all that poorly, and are just trying to put lipstick on a pig.
But the crux of Wojnarowski’s story is that the Nuggets were given a list of teams that he’d like to be traded to — did that actually happen? If so, I don’t see how Denver can’t see the writing on the wall, or feel like they have a good chance of keeping Anthony in town. There’s a reason that he hasn’t signed the extension yet, even with a lockout looming next summer.
