Getty Carmelo Anthony
Carmelo Anthony has not played NBA basketball in a while.
The third overall pick in the 2003 NBA 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.
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.
Million Dollar Question: What’s next for Carmelo Anthony?
“I’m a Carmelo fan just because of Syracuse,” TNT’s Inside The NBA’s Kenny Smith told me.
“I hope he gets back.”
Carmelo Anthony has averaged 24 points, 6.5 rebounds and 3 assists in his career with the Oklahoma City Thunder, New York Knicks, Denver Nuggets and Houston Rockets.
A long forward, Anthony is the epitome of today’s game, honestly. He can score.
“He is one of the best 300 players in the world that’s not playing,” Kenny Smith told me.
“You can’t say he’s not one of the best 300 players.”
So what’s next?
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 Los Angeles Lakers had been leaning toward signing Anthony for the rest of the season — until a mound of LA losses occured.
The Lakers won’t make the NBA Playoffs this spring.
“But now he’s limiting himself in being one of the best 70 players,” Kenny Smith tells me.
“Because there are only certain players looking to win a championship and those are the only teams that are going to take him.”
Many in the NBA community are looking to see Melo rebound.
“I don’t know if they remember how good of a player he was and still is,” the Detroit Pistons’ Blake Griffin told Basketball Society Online’s Landon Buford.
“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.”
“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,” retired NBA player, Quentin Richardson told me on the Scoop B Radio Podcast.
“He’s a great player,” 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.”