Carmelo Anthony watch: OKC Thunder must seize moment to facilitate trade with Bulls
With limited teams holding open cap space the OKC Thunder should target offloading Carmelo Anthony to the Chicago Bulls.
Recent transactions between the Denver Nuggets, Brooklyn Nets and Atlanta Hawks have the OKC Thunder locked and loaded. Can Sam Presti capitalize on the latest trade activity to move Carmelo Anthony?
Carmelo Anthony is still a member of the OKC Thunder. Oklahoma City are yet to gain any significant traction, making a buy-out more likely. There were rumblings of communication between OKC and the Brooklyn Nets front office but that was laid to rest last night when the Nets pulled the trigger on two deals.
In the first deal, the Nets sent Jeremy Lin and a 2025 second-round pick to the Atlanta Hawks.
In the Jeremy Lin deal, Atlanta sends the Nets the rights to 2016 second-round pick Isaia Cordinier (you'll probably never see him). Atlanta gets a 2025 second-round pick and the right to swap picks with Nets in 2023.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) July 13, 2018
In the second trade with the Denver Nuggets, Brooklyn sent guard Isaiah Whitehead for Kenneth Faried, Darell Arthur, a 2019 first-round pick (top 12 protected) and a future second-round pick.
Denver has agreed to send Kenneth Faried, Darrell Arthur, a 2019 protected first-round pick and a future second round pick to Nets for Isaiah Whitehead, league sources tell ESPN. Salary dump for Denver.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) July 13, 2018
While Oklahoma City isn’t directly involved with the two deals, it effectively eliminated Brooklyn and Atlanta as potential trade partners.
Chicago emerges from the pack
Earlier this week,the Chicago Bulls released shooting guard Sean Kilpatrick and rescinded their $1.7 million dollar qualifying offer to guard David Nwaba. Chicago can then waive Paul Zipser and Julyan Stone‘s non-guaranteed deals to free up over $21 million in cap space. This sets the table for a trade to take place.
To avoid sending a future first-round pick, the Thunder will have to take back one of Omer Asik or Cristiano Felicio and Bobby Portis.
Read on to see the semantics of the trade and how it affects both the Bulls and Thunder.