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Carmelo Anthony Update: Analyst Reveals Why Melo’s Perception Is Reality

Carmelo Anthony Waving to the Syracuse crowd

Carmelo Anthony is still without an NBA team and it has many wondering IF he will suit up for one this season.

Million Dollar Question: Will he?

“Perception is reality now,” two-time NBA Champion and TNT analyst, Kenny Smith tells me.

“The perception of what he is, is not the reality of who he was. So the perception, is taken off. People think that he’s the locker room guy, he won’t accept being second fiddle, that’s the perception. The reality is he’s been good for a long damn time.”

The third overall pick in the 2003 NBA Draft by the Denver Nuggets, Carmelo Anthony He has not played NBA basketball since November 8, 2018 when he suited up for the Houston Rockets. Ironically, in that game he played against his former team, the Oklahoma City Thunder.

A 10-time NBA All-Star , Carmelo Anthony has accumulated career averages of 24 points, 6.5 rebounds and 3 assists in his career with the Rockets, Thunder, Nuggets and New York Knicks. “If he has a talent that you need, bring him in,” Kenny Smith tells me.

Melo surely has interest in still playing in the National Basketball Association.

He’s puzzled as to why no one has given the former college basketball National Champion with the Syracuse Orangeman a serious offer.

“Yeah I’m surprised,” Anthony told me on Thursday while appearing on the red carpet of the ALS Association Greater New York Chapter’s dinner which honored him for his philanthropic works in the community.

“It is what it is at this point, I’m sitting back waiting spending time with my family and that’s all I can focus on right now.”

So just how bad does Melo want to play? “2000 percent,” he told me.

“Make that the headline.”

A winner of three Olympic Gold Medals as a member of USA Basketball, Carmelo Anthony struggled the last few NBA seasons.

For those keeping score at home: In Anthony’s lone season with the Oklahoma City Thunder he averaged a career-low 16.2 points on 40 percent shooting. Anthony also made 36 percent of his 3-pointers and his true shooting percentage was 50 percent; his worst ever.

Also worth noting: It was apparent that he was not option one in Billy Donovan’s system. That was Russell Westbrook’s job describiton. If you’re tardy to the party: Paul George was surely option two. Additonally, it could be argued that Melo was option 4 behind Steven Adams.

He also dealt with that whole issue of saying he wasn’t a bench player at his introductory presser when he was asked if he was coming off the bench.

Remember that?


“No player is going to say: Nah, I ain’t got it no more, I’m washed up,’” retured NBA player, Etan Thomas told me.

“So they blew everything he said out of proportion.”

“I always enjoyed my time with Carmelo,” Oklaoma City Thunder head coach, Billy Donovan told Heavy’s Landon Buford.

“Obviously, his skill set is terrific. I think there is a lot of talk that Carmelo doesn’t want to change; it has nothing to do with that at all. “I think Carmelo is trying to find his way where he can be an effective player, and he is willing to do whatever, but when you’ve played a certain way, and at the level that he’d play at for so many years, that’s what made him special.”

Everybody you ask thinks Melo should play. Dwyane Wade told me back in September that he was on board.

Charles Barkley is too.

MSG Networks’ Walt Frazier told me that he thinks Anthony could have burned some bridges.

But will he? Time will tell.

More Heavy Sports News

NBA on TNT analyst, Kenny Smith discusses Carmelo Anthony's future with Heavy.com's Brandon 'Scoop B' Robinson.