NEW YORK, NEW YORK - APRIL 10: Dwyane Wade #3 of the Miami Heat gives his jersey to former NBA player Carmelo Anthony after the game against the Brooklyn Nets at Barclays Center on April 10, 2019 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. This was Wade's last NBA game before retirement. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement.(Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images)
Carmelo Anthony was released by the Houston Rockets in November.
But why?
Stephen A Smith has the answer.
“If you’re an analytics dude, you’re coming in there with numbers,” Smith told DJ Envy, Angela Yee and Charlemagne on Thursday morning’s episode of Power 105’s The Breakfast Club.
“So they’re going to let you flow. This is why Daryl Morey let go of Carmelo with ten games into the season because the analytics dudes judge the game in ten game increments. After ten games, they think it tells you something. So if they wanted Charlemagne, if they wanted Angela, they wanted you, they’d say: ‘we want you gone.’ They ain’t cutting you game 15. They’re gonna cut you at 10 or 20 or 30. It’s like 10 game increments. So it wasn’t an accident. So you got that working against Melo.”
A 10-time NBA All-Star, Anthony signed with the Houston Rockets last summer after clearing waivers in a trade that shipped him from the Thunder to the Atlanta Hawks. After signing with the Rockets he was later traded to the Chicago Bulls before the NBA’s trading deadline.
Carmelo Anthony has been working out with members of the Brooklyn Nets in Los Angeles this summer.
The Lakers do have one final roster spot and many believe that Carmelo Anthony still has some game left in the tank to compete against many of the NBA’s elite.
“His first year in the league, he took a 17-win Nuggets team to the playoffs in the West as a rookie,” said Fox Sports’ Chris Broussard.
“He is one of the best 300 players in the world that’s not playing,” TNT’s Kenny Smith told me in April. “You can’t say he’s not one of the best 300 players.”
Melo to Brooklyn from a basketball standpoint also does make sense.
The Nets have a potent roster with names like Caris LeVert, Joe Harris and Spencer Dinwiddie complimenting Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant.
The Nets will likely be without Durant this season as he recovers from a ruptured Achilles tendon.
“Definitely want to see him get back into the league,” Dwyane Wade tells me of Carmelo Anthony.
“But you also want to see him to get back to a place where they can allow Melo to play the game he loves the way that Melo can.”
While he’s been away from the game, he’s been spending a ton of time going to his son, Kiyan’s basketball games.
“I don’t know if they remember how good of a player he was and still is,” Blake Griffin told Landon Buford last 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.”
Dwyane Wade told me that he wants to see Melo latch on to a team.
Where is that team? “The place that wants him,” newly retired NBA legend, Dwyane Wade told me.
“The place that’s going to allow him to be Melo and understand that he still can play the game of basketball.”