5 trade destinations for Carmelo Anthony
By John Buhler
Memphis Grizzlies
West, Southwest
One place that Anthony might actually want to go to is the Memphis Grizzlies. He would get to play for David Fizdale, the former Miami Heat assistant who helped Anthony’s buds LeBron James and Dwyane Wade win titles in South Beach.
Memphis is in a weird spot as a franchise. The Grizzlies have a cultural phenomenon known as the Grit ‘n’ Grind era of Memphis basketball: a slow-paced, half court, ultra-phyiscal brand of hoops. Now that Fizdale has brought the three-ball to the Mississippi Delta, this is a team Anthony could fit with easily.
He’d play the stretch four and could work alongside Mike Conley, Chandler Parsons and Mark Gasol in the starting lineup. Memphis is perpetually in win-now mode, and adding Anthony could get this team further than the first round of the 2017 Western Conference Playoffs.
The Grizzlies would have to give up Zach Randolph at minimum, maybe Tony Allen or rookie Wade Baldwin IV. New York has done stranger things, so seeing Randolph back at Madison Square Garden wouldn’t be all that shocking.
Anthony would get to co-create on offense with Conley as the other primary Memphis ball handler. If he’s up for playing defense for a small market team, this could be a great landing spot for Anthony. However, when has he ever wanted to do either of those things?