New York Knicks: Designing an ideal Carmelo Anthony trade with Portland Trail Blazers

The Untouchables

The New York Knicks have a number of quality players that could be included in a potential Carmelo Anthony trade. The reality is: No player on the Knicks is likely to be traded but Anthony in the event of a trade to Portland.

Nevertheless, untouchables must be outlined for both franchises—and the list admittedly complicates a potential trade.

For Portland, the untouchables are guards Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum, and center Jusuf Nurkic. It would be to fair to add Al-Farouq Aminu to that list due to his value as Portland’s most versatile defender

The Knicks would be wise to ask for Aminu, but it may be hard to sell Portland on the idea of giving up its only player who can consistently defend both forward positions.

As for New York, the purely untouchable players should be Willy Hernangomez, Frank Ntilikina, and Kristaps Porzingis. There would be no sense in trading any of those three players for anything other than Lillard or McCollum, and even then, Porzingis would be off limits.

There aren’t a great deal of restrictions here, but it may be a limited enough scope to eliminate a compelling trade target: Aminu.