I’ll TRADE YA

Carmelo Anthony is the buzz, likely for the rest of this week after his request to be moved from the Denver Nuggets to the New York Knicks was granted on Tuesday, February 22, 2011. He was involved in a 13 player trade between three teams. STOP RIGHT THERE! I thought a trade was when I gave you something and you gave me something that I perceive is of equal value. What’s this 13-players involved stuff? Well in the business of professional basketball, it is like me giving you a fresh pack of Big League’s Chew for a sleeve of scratch-n-sniff stickers. In the NBA, the rule of value for value still holds and unloading one player could mean a 13-player flury if the focal point of the trade is a franchise player worth 18-million per. Nevertheless, trading humans seems strange and I’ll tell you why.

I grew up trading things not people. And the only trades that seem to not offend my conscience ethically are ones like the one made on Tuesday sending Melo to the Knicks. Even this is troubling though because of the lives uprooted in the process. Twelve other guys get to hire moving trucks because one dude outgrew the team that drafted him after his one-and-done year at Syracuse. I’m not so salty about it all but the principle merits discussing. What happens…on the inside…when you get traded in? Is there something translated to us when we are traded throughout our lives? When a man or woman in a bad marriage is traded in by a spouse who decides to find love elsewhere, it would seem appropriate that the victim find solace in the riddance of the cheater. But so often there’s lots of pain, self-loathing and a host of other emotions that speak to the ill effects of the trade. See, the trade sends a message that I no longer need you but at it’s best maybe it’s a mutual decision that if we’re going to part, let’s play win-win. Either way, something seems fishy about trading people like vehicles. Loyalty, though a hackneyed virtue, has a certain something that smells of security. I find that most of my own anger usually stems from disloyalty or perceptions of such. I can’t quite put my finger on why the trade of humans is so unnatural but I know that it feels foreign no matter how many times I see it. Is it not odd to have a personal experience with someone and then send them packing? Switching teams I get. It’s the use of people like pawns that I find disconcerting. And at the end of the day, Carmelo Anthony did ask to be traded. Denver merely granted his request. But usually trades are made win-lose and the power player is the winner. I have no real conclusion. How do you feel about being traded? Has it ever happened to you? Do tell.