Carmelo Anthony doesn’t have an NBA job right now.
Guess what?
Anthony, a former New York Knicks,has the support of a current New York Knick.
Insert Mario Hezonja.
Hezonja tweeted recently that the toughest player in isolation sequence aint suiting up for any NBA teams.
“The toughest player to guard is unfortunately not in NBA right now. You have 1 guess..”
See for yourself:
The toughest player to guard is unfortunately not in NBA right now. You have 1 guess..
That’s love!
So Henzonja did hint he didn’t actually say who. But the context clues are there.
Per Golf Digest’s Christopher Powers:
Starting the tweet with “Iso” right off the bat, and with the knowledge this player is not in the NBA, the mind immediately goes to two options: Carmelo Anthony and Kobe Bryant. But, as you continue to read the tweet, which lists off all the things Melo and Kobe both did extremely well, you’ll notice Hezonja use the word “bully.” While Anthony will always be known as “Melo,” he was also often referred to as “bully” for his style of play in the post, where he’d aggressively use his body to gain position, like a bully would. Many NBA fans on Twitter put two and two together and the consensus seems to be that Mario was referring to Melo:
Once that was written, Twitter went wild:
“Man, I hope above all else that whatever it is, however he wants it to end, he gets to walk away and go down on his own terms,” Quentin Richardson told me on the Scoop B Radio Podcast.
“I think he deserves that, I think he’s earned that, I definitely think he’s getting an unfair shake, especially at the last three stops, the way things ended in New York, and then OKC and Houston, I didn’t feel like any of things shook out fairly for him. I think anybody who’s watching can see that he’s handled himself in the most professional way that anybody could under the circumstances where you’ve got people, your own organization, people in there, talking about his name, and doing, you know, just doing things that shouldn’t be happening, you know what i’m saying? Period, at any level. And Melo took the high road every single time, no matter what, has always, you know, taken the high road and did the professional, the good thing, and stayed above horrible things, no matter how bad people were trying to paint him and things like that.”
A 10-time NBA All-Star, Anthony signed with the Houston Rockets this summer after clearing waivers in a trade that shipped him from the Oklahoma City Thunder the Atlanta Hawks.
In an interview with Taryn Finley of the Huffington Post recently, Melo suggested he is at peace with the fact he may not play much longer:
“I’m sure [retirement is] coming soon. I’d be sitting lying to you if I said it’s not coming soon. I think I want it to come soon. I don’t think I want to do this forever, but because you love it so much, it’s hard to give it up. At the end of the day, at anything you do, when it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go. But as long as you feel good with that.”
The third overall pick in the 2003 draft, Anthony’s last appearance with the Houston Rockets came in a blowout loss to Oklahoma City on Nov. 8 when he had two points and five rebounds.
News out of LA last week was that the Lakers and Anthony halted their talks.
A league source shared with me yesterday that LeBron James and his camp no longer had interest in the Lakers signing Melo this season.
Per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski:
The Los Angeles Lakers and free agent Carmelo Anthony are pausing talks on a possible contract agreement unless the franchise makes a turn back toward pursuit of Western Conference playoffs contention, league sources told ESPN.
The Lakers had been leaning toward signing Anthony for the rest of the season — until losses in four of the past five games left the organization and Anthony’s camp wondering if it made sense to bring the veteran into an unsettled environment with suddenly so little chance of making the playoffs, league sources said.
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Knicks News: Carmelo Anthony Hardest To Defend Says This Popular NY Athlete