Carmelo Anthony proud of rule named after him

They call it "The Melo Rule,'' and it has been one of the sticking points between players and owners in the broken-down talks over a new NBA collective-bargaining agreement.

The prohibition of "extend-and-trade" deals, such as the one that allowed the Knicks to acquire Carmelo Anthony from the Nuggets last season, is one of six contentious system issues that brought the collective-bargaining process to a grinding halt last week.

Through the Melo Rule, the owners want to limit how much control a player has on where he plays. Players, meanwhile, want the freedom to go where they please.

And the player who inspired the rule found it amusing that it could become a part of his legacy.

"I'm just glad I can be part of something,'' Anthony said last month. "When I'm dead and gone, the Melo Rule will still be here. I'm just excited that they named a rule after me.''

Anthony is the lead plaintiff, along with four other NBA players, in a complaint in Northern California District Court -- known as Anthony et al vs. National Basketball Association -- that is one of two lawsuits the players have filed against the league. The other, in Minnesota District Court, is led by Mavericks forward Caron Butler.

Anthony actually came forward and offered to lend his name as a star player (the way Tom Brady did, along with Drew Brees and Peyton Manning, in the NFL players' lawsuit against owners last spring). Another All-Star, Kevin Durant, also is on the Northern California complaint along with Anthony's Knicks teammate, Chauncey Billups.

There has yet to be a motion in response from the NBA in either suit.

The owners held a conference call Thursday to discuss the situation, but according to multiple published reports, no strategy was unveiled.

It is believed, however, that the league has Christmas Day -- traditionally the NBA's national television premiere event -- targeted as a critical date for a regular season. If they can't play by then, there might not be a season. The NBA had a 50-game schedule in 1998-99, but very few owners are believed to have an interest in that this time.

Commissioner David Stern has said the league can start a regular season 30 days after an agreement on a new CBA. That would suggest that if a deal isn't done by Friday, there might not be a season.

"Nobody can tell you how long it's going to take,'' David Boies, the leader of the players' legal team, said of antitrust litigation last week.

"But I think it is in everybody's interests to try to resolve this promptly. The longer it goes on, the greater the damages that the teams will face and the greater the damages that the players will suffer, and perhaps more important, the longer that basketball fans will be deprived of basketball.''

The best-case scenario, of course, is to have a settlement that leads to a collective-bargaining agreement, which, until last week's stunning explosion, seemed very close to fruition.

Boies, coincidentally, has experience in this exact process from last spring, when he represented the NFL in the Brady lawsuit. The NFL's legal team also had another superstar lawyer, Paul Clement, who is part of the NBA's team in these proceedings.

The two have battled in major cases before, but perhaps as recent former teammates in the NFL negotiations, they can work out what Stern and Billy Hunter, executive director of the now-defunct NBPA, couldn't.

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