NBA Trades 2014: LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony 95 Percent Guaranteed To Team Up; Miami Heat Forming Big Four in South Beach
LeBron James might still be playing for the Miami Heat in this year's NBA Finals, but the four-time NBA MVP is already planning his next move.
According to ESPN NBA insider Stephen A. Smith, there's 95 percent chance James will join forces with Carmelo Anthony if the two superstars decide to stay put for one more seasons and become a free-agent thereafter.
Smith, who's known for coming up with wild prediction, might have pulled the wildest of them all by saying that LeBron and Melo will team up probably in 2015.
During his radio show Wednesday on ESPN New York 98.7 FM, Smith talked about the possibility James and Anthony will play together in New York, if they both opted in to their contracts for the 2014-15 season.
mith said on his radio show Wednesday on ESPN New York 98.7 FM's "The Stephen A. Smith and Ryan Ruocco Show" that Carmelo Anthony and LeBron James would like to play together and it's a "95 percent possibility" that James and Anthony would end up together if both opted in to their contracts for the 2014-15 season.
"LeBron wants to play with Melo," Smith said during the show, according to Sports-Kings. "Melo wants to play with LeBron."
Smith said that if both James and Anthony opt in this summer, "the New York Knicks would have a shot at getting LeBron James to come to New York."
The Knicks are projected to have enough cap space to land two max free agents in summer 2015.
"I'm here to tell you right now it's a 95 percent possibility - if not more - that they would join forces whether it be in New York or Miami."
Anthony is expected to lead a solid crop of free-agents this offseason, with Lance Stephenson, Eric Bledsoe and Chandler Parsons all becoming available for the taking this summer.
Anthony has been one of the most offensively gifted talents in the NBA, but unlike his fellow batchmates James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, he's still looking for his first NBA championship ring.
NY Knicks president of basketball operations Phil Jackson expressed his desire to retain Melo's service, but teams like the Chicago Bulls, Boston Celtics, LA Lakers and the Houston Rockets are angling to get the explosive scorer.
Heat Big Four
There are also speculations that Anthony could join forces with LeBron, Wade, and Bosh to form an unprecedented Big Four in South Beach. ESPN's Brian Windhorst and Marc Stein discussed this possibility and they believed the Heat has the resources and influence to pull it off.
Sources told ESPN.com that Heat officials and the team's leading players have already started to explore their options for creating sufficient financial flexibility to make an ambitious run at adding New York Knicks scoring machine Carmelo Anthony this summer in free agency.