The NBA offseason is significant for the shifts teams make in the effort to improve. Most of it seems like swapping on one good or average player for another one, the key exception perhaps being the move by LeBron James from the Cleveland Cavaliers to the Los Angeles Lakers.
With few exceptions, players want out of the interior of the U.S. and onto the east or west coasts. This would seem to be the case of Jimmy Butler, the star of the Minnesota (read: colder than imaginable) Timberwolves, who has turned down an extension from the team.
Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor reports that Butler turned down a four-year, $110 million extension. Butler obviously feels he can get a better deal or the same money and a better location and he may feel he is not being given the correct degree of respect by not being made the highest paid player on the team.
Elsewhere, it would seem that Carmelo Anthony wants out of Oklahoma City, with the Houston Rockets being the presumptive favourites for his new destination. The question mark is will he share a basketball with James Harden.
Anthony famously left Denver for the New York Knicks some years ago, most observers feeling that his actor wife wanted out of the Dusty Old Cowtown.
The OKC Thunder is working feverishly to find a trade for Anthony, so as not to eat the entire cost that would be incurred by waiving him outright. The main issue for any team considering Anthony is that he is old, and even in his prime, his idea of defense was to stand on the court with his hands on his hips, yelling at his teammates to cover the other players. It might come down to a one-year deal at a veteran’s minimum with some desperate club.
Jabari Parker appears on the verge of escaping Milwaukee (see above re Minnesota), but it would seem like a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire, as Parker seems to be headed to the Chicago Bulls.
