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Anthony has not played NBA basketball since November as a member of the Houston Rockets.
Last season, he played for the Oklahoma City Thunder and that ended not so good!
One person believes that the Thunder should be ashamed of themselves.
Insert: Steven Tsakanikas, a CUNY college student who runs social media on Anthony’s Team Melo Social Media Accounts.
Tsakanikas stated on Twitter that the Oklahoma City Thunder owe Anthony an apology.
“Hope Jerami Grant and Nerlens Noel were worth scapegoating one of the all-time great scorers that put up 16 and 5.8 all while having no real role on the team,” tweeted Tsakanikas.”
YOU OWE THIS MAN AN APOLOGY @okcthunder
Hope Jerami Grant and Nerlens Noel were worth scapegoating one of the all-time great scorers that put up 16 and 5.8 all while having no real role on the team.
Last season,the Thunder were already a team who had to pay a large sum of money in luxury tax for having such an expensive roster. Buying out Anthony’s contract or stretching his salary over future years were both options that would still affect them negatively going forward.
Per Forbes SportsMoney Contributor, Nick Crain:
Oklahoma City Paying $27.9 million the following season for a player who would not even be on the roster would be brutal. Stretching his salary out over three years at roughly $9 million each year would result in making it more difficult to build a roster for several years down the road, limiting the amount of money available to sign free agents and re-sign current players.
To make things even more difficult for the Thunder, Melo also had a no-trade clause in his contract, meaning he could veto any trade the Thunder made that included him. This gave Anthony all of the leverage in Oklahoma City finding a trade partner, as Anthony could choose which teams he would allow a trade to.
If you’re keeping score at home: the internet saw Tsakanikas’s point of view:
From a Thunder fan:
Melo haters when people hit them with the facts
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 to the Atlanta Hawks.
What next?
“I think Carmelo’s game still adapts to today’s game, it just has to be the right situation,” Sacramento Kings assistant coach Bobby Jackson told NBA writer, Landon Buford.
“With Carmelo’s situation being that he is 15 or 16 seasons in, will he be willing to take a back seat by coming off the bench and being a limited role player in that offense? I think that is the biggest question with Carmelo.”
The Rockets traded Anthony to the Chicago Bulls before the NBA’s trade deadline and was later waived.
The third overall pick in the 2003 NBA Draft, the Los Angeles Lakers had been leaning toward signing Anthony for the rest of the season — until a mound of LA losses occured.
Anthony has averaged 24 points, 6.5 rebounds and 3 assists in his career with the Thunder, New York Knicks, Denver Nuggets and Houston Rockets.
A long forward, Anthony is the epitome of today’s game, honestly.
He can score!
But he’s also contemplated retirement.
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.”
“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, Anthony’s former Knicks teammate told me on the Scoop B Radio Podcast.
“He is one of the best 300 players in the world that’s not playing,” TNT’s Kenny Smith told me.
“You can’t say he’s not one of the best 300 players.”
“You don’t get better sitting out of basketball,” TNT’s Charles Barkley told me.
What about next season?
“It might be over,” said Barkley.
Yikes.
A long forward, Anthony is the epitome of today’s game, honestly. He can score.
“I don’t know if they remember how good of a player he was and still is,” Blake Griffin told Basketball Society Online’s Landon Buford during the regular season.
“Sometimes it’s the situation. It sucks to see as a basketball player to see people act [as if] he is something [that] he is not.”
“He’s a great player,” New York Knicks captain, Lance Thomas told me in December.
“He’s a great teammate, most importantly he’s a great human being and he’s always been a great advocate for the NBA as a brand. So I just want him to get back on a team and play the sport he loves that’s paved a way for him and his family, and he just loves to play basketball, so I really want him back on a team.”
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Oklahoma City Thunder Owe Carmelo Anthony an Apology Says Writer