Elsa/Getty Images
In 2011, the New York Knicks traded pick-swap rights in the 2016 NBA draft to the Denver Nuggets as part of the trade to acquire Carmelo Anthony.
That pick became Jamal Murray.
Hours after Murray and Nikola Jokić spearheaded the Nuggets’ 2023 NBA championship, Anthony took to Twitter to congratulate his former team.
Carmelo Anthony @carmeloanthony
CHAMPS! Congrats @nuggets 🙌🏾 https://t.co/EhPIxX8JLf
Anthony played seven-plus seasons with the Nuggets before forcing his way to New York midway through the 2010-11 season. The trade request made Anthony reviled in Denver for several years, though time later healed those wounds.
It didn’t hurt that the Nuggets remained competitive even without Anthony. The franchise made the playoffs in each of its first two post-Anthony seasons while the Knicks struggled to build a competitive team around Melo.
While the Nuggets would go through a five-year stretch of missing the playoffs from 2014 to 2018, that period gave them the ammunition to select Murray and Jokić in the draft to build the cornerstones of their franchise.
Anthony retired from the NBA earlier this year after 19 seasons.
