Carmelo Anthony has not played NBA basketball since November.
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?
One writer, believes he has the answer: an Anthony return to the New York Knicks or the Denver Nuggets, his former teams.
Two destinations that probably immediately come to mind are the Denver Nuggets and New York Knicks. After all, those two teams were where Anthony spent his prime years, leading the Nuggets to the Western Conference Finals one season and winning a scoring title with the Knicks in another.
The question is, can either of those two clubs find room for the 34-year-old at this point?
by Matthew SchmidtMarch 23, 2019
It’s late March, and Carmelo Anthony remains unsigned. The former scoring champion who was once a mortal lock to make the All-Star team has become an afterthought in one of the quickest descents we have seen in the history of the NBA.Anthony began the season with the Houston Rockets and played all of 10 games before the Rockets decided that things weren’t working. Houston then essentially exiled him before trading him to the Chicago Bulls in late January, who then promptly waived him.
Many felt that the natural next destination for Anthony would be the Los Angeles Lakers, where he could join his buddy LeBron James, but that never materialized.
For the first time in his NBA career, it seems that Anthony is entirely unwanted, as no contender is touching him with a pole attached to another pole after seeing what he did with the Oklahoma City Thunder a year ago.
So, what really is next for Carmelo Anthony?
One thing is for sure: It doesn’t appear that Anthony will be playing for a championship ever again. The Thunder gave him a shot. It didn’t work. The Rockets tried it. They got sick of him after a month.
It’s hard to envision any team that has title aspirations taking a chance on him, as the changing NBA landscape has phased out players like Anthony to the point where they are entirely useless in today’s game.
There was a time when Anthony was one of the game’s most lethal scorers, possessing an incredible and seemingly never-ending arsenal of moves inside and out. It reached a point where you were surprised if he didn’t drop 25 points in a game.
But now, the game has made Anthony’s style an ancient relic, one that will probably never return. At least not on the level of Anthony.
Where, then, can Melo go?
Of course, two destinations that probably immediately come to mind are the Denver Nuggets and New York Knicks. After all, those two teams were where Anthony spent his prime years, leading the Nuggets to the Western Conference Finals one season and winning a scoring title with the Knicks in another.
The question is, can either of those two clubs find room for the 34-year-old at this point?
Let’s start with Denver.
The Nuggets have been one of the league’s most pleasant surprises this season, as they have been near the top of the Western Conference standings all year and possess an exciting young core led by Nikola Jokic, Gary Harris and Jamal Murray.
Denver isn’t ready to win a championship, but with the right moves, the Nuggets could be a legitimate threat in another couple of years. So, is there a way that Denver can squeeze Anthony on to the roster without hurting its long-term prospects?
It’s honestly difficult to say yes. The Nuggets clearly have something positive brewing right now, and throwing Anthony into the mix might mess things up. Jokic and the rest of the guys seem to have a great synergy, one that an iso-heavy player like Melo can really tamper with.
So, what about the Knicks?
New York is clearly in rebuilding mode. Barring a couple of major free-agent additions this summer, the Knicks will probably not be playing for titles anytime soon, so it seems like a logical place for Carmelo’s swan song, right?
For the first time in a while, the Knicks actually have a decent future, with guys like Mitchell Robinson, Kevin Knox and Allonzo Trier providing them with some long-term hope, and the fact that they may end up with a top-three pick in this year’s draft is just icing on the cake.
The Houston 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 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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Carmelo Anthony Return: Knicks, Nuggets Might Work Says NBA Writer