Two years ago, he scoffed at the idea of coming off the bench when asked that in his first and only training camp with the Oklahoma City Thunder. In what would be his first and only season with the Houston Rockets, this perennial All-Star, and future Hall of Famer to that secondary role. That experiment as well as his time with “Clutch City” was even shorter. Still without a team and the prospects of his career possibly ending not on his terms but without a ring, the No. 3 overall pick in the 2003 draft sat down for an interview with ESPN to explain in his own words how last season went completely south.
After accepting a Sixth Man role with the Houston Rockets at the start of the 2018-19 NBA season, 10-time All-Star Carmelo Anthony seemed poised and ready to help perennial All-Stars James Harden and Chris Paul, his close friend dethrone the eventual five-time Western Conference champion and two-time defending NBA champion Golden State Warriors.
That experiment lasted just 10 games, with the Rockets going just 4-6 and while Anthony scored 20-plus on four of those 10 occasions, General Manager Daryl Morey through a statement said that Anthony and the Rockets would be “parting ways.”
This short partnership, where Anthony averaged 13.4 points and 5.4 rebounds on just 40.5 percent shooting concluded when the Rockets traded the three-time Olympic Gold Medalist and 2013 NBA scoring leader on Jan 22nd to the Chicago Bulls, who waived him on Feb. 1.
The former Denver Nugget, New York Knick and Rocket still has not been signed by a team this off-season and in an hour-long sit-down interview with Stephen A. Smith on ESPN’s “First Take” from Los Angeles on Friday morning revealed that he “felt fired after making a major effort to make the most of his reduced role with the Rockets a season ago.
“I was surprised by it big time,” Anthony said to Smith about basically being told to go home, right on the heels of a 28-point performance at the Brooklyn Nets back in Nov. 2018. “It went from, ‘Oh this is a piece that we want. This is the piece that we need.’”
“Mind you, we’ve been talking for three years, four years they was trying to get me to come to the Houston Rockets, and I finally went there. They finally said, ‘Okay, this is the piece that we need.’”
Anthony went on to say that he finally gets to “Clutch City” he is doing everything he needs to do from practicing and being very professional to everyone in the organization from the top on down and all of a sudden, the Rockets pull the plug on the whole situation.
He would go on to say that he tried to reach out to GM Morey on how to resolve the situation. What could Anthony do to fix the situation?
“But then he had in mind that he wanted to come talk to me too about releasing me and letting me go. I did not like how that went down,” Anthony said.
In the blink of an eye, the Rockets said goodbye to a 10-time All-Star, six-time All-NBA selection and according to Smith, Anthony played a game in that 10-game stretch against his former team the Thunder on Nov. 8, 2018 (98-80) on TNT, traveled with the Rockets to San Antonio, TX for the next game at the Spurs two nights later where he played that night in the team’s 96-89 loss.
Anthony said to Smith as he was in his hotel room getting ready for the contest at the Spurs where he was supposed to speak to Morey that night, as he reached out to find out what he could do to help the team.
When the two eventually met, Anthony said that Morey told him that he was no longer going to be a part of the Rockets.
Anthony said that he had accepted his role of coming off the bench, something that was very hard for him to do.
“I’ve already starting to accept the fact that I gotta come off the bench, which was very hard for me,” Anthony said when he met with GM Morey. “I accepted that, and I moved on from that, right? But you’re telling me that I can’t make a nine, 10-man rotation on this team. It’s deeper than basketball.”
Anthony told Smith that he reached out to Paul and Harden right after that conversation to find out if they knew anything about this or not. Both said they had no clue either about the Rockets not wanting Anthony on the team anymore.
Anthony and Paul had a serious heart-to-heart conversation in his hotel room at 1 a.m. early that morning where Paul looked his close friend right in his eyes and said that he would never blindside him like that.
The conversation Anthony told Smith that he and Paul had was very emotional one where Anthony felt like crap when GM Morey told that one of the greatest scorers on the hardwood of this generation could not be part of a nine-man rotation of a championship caliber squad.
“To sit there across from the GM of the team and him tell you, ‘Listen, your services are no longer needed,’” Anthony said of what Morey told him in his hotel room in San Antonio, TX that night in the middle of November 2018
“That was an ego hit. That was a pride hit. Like I felt like, I started questioning myself after that. Damn, can I still do this? What did I do?”
Literally, Anthony asked that to GM Morey, who said that it was nothing he did not do. It is just that the situation was not working out from his perspective and that in that instant he was as he said “fired” from a job he has done for a long time, play basketball.
When Smith asked if head coach Mike D’Antoni, who Anthony at times butted heads with during their time with the New York Knicks earlier this decade, Anthony said that he felt this decision was strictly the choice of GM Morey.
Perhaps another reason why Anthony remains unsigned is something that his former teammate with the Nuggets in current ESPN NBA analyst Chauncey Billups, who was the team’s starting lead guard the only time Anthony made it to the Conference Finals in 2009, where they Nuggets fell to the eventual NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers in six games.
Billups in speaking on Sirius XM radio back in July was very complimentary of Anthony’s work ethic in practice, but also said that scoring 30 was more important to Anthony than winning games.
If he had a great night scoring the ball, but the team lost Anthony would in the locker room speaking and giving words of encouragement to his teammates. If he scored less than 30, even if the team won the game his mood was not good.
Smith spoke with Billups before his interview with Anthony and said that he was not trying to call Anthony out with what he said because he was referring to a younger version of Anthony who was around 24 years old at the time.
Anthony said that determination to make baskets earlier in his career was part of mentality that he developed from high school to his one season at Syracuse University, where he led the Orangemen to the NCAA title in 2003.
“I had a different mentality. It was kill or be killed,” Anthony said of his younger self. “Like, I had to go eat. I had to eat, and whatever I had to do for us to be able to win or put ourselves in a situation to win I was willing to do that. I was doing that, so to his [Billups] it wasn’t 30, it was 40, it was 50. If I didn’t score those points, I felt like I didn’t do my job, because that was my mentality. It was to go all out at that point in time.”
Anthony said when Billups came, he made him realize there is more to winning a basketball game then just scoring 30-plus. To the comments Billups made earlier this summer, Anthony said he took it as a “learning tool.” But added, “My only issue was the timing of his comments.”
“Because of everything that’s surrounded me and these talks, and these conversations, and this narrative around Carmelo. I don’t think that was the right time for him to say, ‘Oh, he likes scoring 30 in the loss. But he don’t like scoring 20 in the win.’ Like I just think that narrative. That conversation was a bad time.”
It is those comments by Billups and anything that has been said by other people instead what comes out of his own mouth Anthony feels has kept him from getting signed with a team in free agency with the summer almost over.
That was a major reason why he sat down with Mr. Smith to do a one-on-one interview to speak about things in his own words.
Mr. Smith put himself out there as well when he said that the biggest mistake that Anthony made was the five-year, $80 million deal to remain with the Nuggets 13 years ago.
Around that time, Anthony came on Mr. Smith’s talk show “Quite Frankly” and said he was not willing to walk away from that kind of money, especially from how he grew up in Baltimore, MD where he did not have much.
The issue with that five-year deal is that there was no player option or team option in the fifth year of the deal, which he could have fought for.
Back then when the Heat super team of Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade and LeBron James formed in the summer of 2010, originally it was supposed to be Anthony teaming up with the dynamic duo of Wade and James.
They both said to him to take the three-year deal and see what takes place, where he said that he was so naive and he had an “immaturity” for not seeing the bigger picture of having the fate of his future in his own hands and keeping the pressure on management to have a team around him every year that was in line to compete for the Larry O’Brien trophy.
He also added that he did not understand from the business perspective of the seismic shift that was about to take place of players going for shorter deals, which took place after the new Collective Bargaining Agreement was signed late in lockout shortened 2011-12 season.
“I loved Denver. I wanted to be in Denver,” Anthony said. “I wasn’t ready to leave Denver, right? All of this happened with me getting out of Denver my last season with the Denver Nuggets.”
On top of that, Anthony is from the old school to where he was not about joining some of the best in the game to reach the mountain top of the league. He wanted to take down the likes of James, Wade, and others.
It was there time during the Olympics of 2008 where Anthony, James and Wade talked about possibly teaming up. They did not know that could come to fruition or how they would make it happen.
“At that point in time when they brought that to me, it was just an idea,” Anthony said.
It was then that Anthony saw the ugly side of the business of basketball where certain players were not going to get re-signed. How other players were leaving to join other teams.
Here Anthony realized quickly that he needed to position himself to move on from the Nuggets, which happened.
The other thing from the outside looking in about where Anthony is at this point in his career, he had a few opportunities to sign with a team that had a serious chance of winning that championship, which is the only thing missing from his career resume. He instead decided to like in the summer of 2014 re-sign with the Knicks, who offered him the most money.
To that Anthony said like him signing with the Heat, which was speculated last off-season was “just an idea.”
Him re-signing with the Knicks, he was going to sign with the Chicago Bulls and team up at that time with 2011 Kia MVP Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah, Luol Deng and head coach Tom Thibodeau.
Amongst the teams that Anthony met with, he learned behind the scenes that certain players that he wanted to play with were not going to be there. That the situation on certain teams from the top on down were not in concert with one another.
The last team he met with was the Knicks because he said that he was ready to move on and start fresh elsewhere.
When Anthony met with the Knicks, he asked them what was there plan to get them to a championship competing level?
“There were a lot of things that was promised. A lot of things that was said. And I said, ‘You know what, because I belong in New York I’m gonna role with you. I’m gonna role with you.”
As noble and wonderful that was Anthony did then, re-signing on a reported five-year, $120 million deal in July 2014, the flipside to that is people will look at that and say for a guy that has played in “The Association” for 16 seasons, you have been to just one Conference Finals, never playing in the NBA Finals. His good friend in James has been in The Finals nine times winning three titles. His other good friend in Wade has been in The Finals five times winning three rings.
Anthony said to that to Smith, “As a competitor it makes me feel like, ‘Damn, why not me? Like, what’s going on?’”
“But on the flipside of that, I’ve never been put in those situations before. I’ve never had the teams that LeBron James has had. I’ve never had the teams D-Wade has had. I’ve never had the teams that a lot of these stars out there has had. It’s always been me.”
Anthony also said of the Knicks situation he believed in what management was selling to him so much that he did not care about anything else.
He said that there was a comfort level in being in the “Big Apple.” He was home where he was born. Also, this was something that he wanted. He wanted to be in New York when no one else did and still does not to this day because how thing are run, led by owner James Dolan.
“I wanted to do something that was special in New York,” Anthony said. “I was putting the chips on everybody else and saying, ‘Yo, give me somebody. Get me some people here. Put something around me, and then let’s give me a fair chance to see what’s going on?’”
The Knicks did get someone when Amar’e Stoudemire signed a five-year, $100 million deal to come to the “Big Apple” and Anthony was acquired on Feb. 22, 2011.
Aside from the Knicks making the playoffs in back-to-back seasons in the springs of 2012 and 2013, with the 2013 postseason appearance had them in the Semifinals for the first time since 2000, the next four years saw Anthony and the Knicks miss the playoffs, compiling a record of 117-211 in those last four seasons.
At this moment in time Carmelo Anthony, is an unrestricted free agent. He has a career resume and a skill set of scoring the basketball, which is how he became the No. 19 all-time scorer in NBA history with 25,551 points that would be helpful right now to any team in the National Basketball Association.
With everything that has happened to in his last three stops with the Knicks, Thunder and Rockets, it is hard to see him possible catching on with another team, at least not until late in the 2019-20 season if not at all. Even with the fact the likes of LeBron James and Dwyane Wade and even All-Star guard Damian Lillard of the Portland Trail Blazers that have the kind of clout to have Anthony on a roster at this moment.
Whether the interview that Anthony did with Stephen A. Smith on ESPN’s “First Take” from Los Angeles, CA did anything to move the needle on him signing with a roster this upcoming season remains to be scene, he at least got to tell his side of things.
Carmelo Anthony will be in the Hall of Fame when he decides to say goodbye to the game. Getting a last opportunity to play in the league, to possibly win a title will likely not be up to him, which really has made him really think about everything that has transpired where he went from one of the best players in the league for 10-plus seasons and now there is a notion he is finished, as he said he is in the gym every day staying ready.
“It strikes me that I’m not on a roster, along with due to my talent first, right? Due to my skill, knowing what I can still bring to this game,” Anthony said.
“You mean to tell me there’s 30 teams in the NBA, I can’t make a 15-man roster out of 30 teams in the NBA. That’s why I start to think about this a lot more. Thirty teams, I can’t make a 15-man roster in this NBA.”
Information, statistics, and quotations courtesy of 7/9/2014 www.si.com article, “Carmelo Anthony Re-Signs with Knicks,” by Ben Golliver; 8/2/19 10 a.m. edition of ESPN’s “First Take,” with Molly Qerim Rose, Stephen A. Smith and Max Kellerman; 8/2/19 3 p.m. edition “NBA: The Jump” on ESPN with Jorge Sedano, Ramona Shelburne, and Dave McMenamin; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_Knicks_seasons; and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmelo_Anthony.
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