Posted by Sabrina B. @gametimegirl
After a group of locked-out NBA all-stars took part in a charity game last weekend in South Florida, Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony said he wants to hold a similar game in New York. And on Tuesday, while promoting his new basketball shoe, Anthony’s Knicks superstar teammate Amar’e Stoudemire said the locked out players are mulling the idea of starting their own league.
“If we don’t go to Europe, we’re going to start our own league, that’s how I see it,” Stoudemire told reporters in Manhattan, where he was promoting the release of his new Nike shoe. “It’s very serious. It’s a matter of us strategically coming up with a plan, a blueprint and putting it together. So we’ll see how this lockout goes. If it goes one or two years, we’ve got to start our own league.”
Well, if either Anthony or Stoudemire gets his wish and the locked out players need a place to play, the Prudential Center would be willing to host them, according to Robert Sommer, a spokesman for the four-year-old Newark arena.
“We can do it,” Sommer said of hosting barnstorming NBA players in games. “And we would love to host Carmelo.”
The Nets are renting dates at Prudential Center, which is controlled by the NHL’s Devils, for the 2011-12 season before a planned move to Brooklyn and the new Barclays Center next fall. So, while a building like Madison Square Garden — which is owned by the people who own the Knicks — wouldn’t stage games featuring locked-out NBA players, the Prudential Center is free to entertain any act, or show, that can pay the rent.
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WRITTEN BY NJ.com / Colin Stephenson/The Star-Ledger  & FULL STORY HERE