Carmelo Anthony knows when he’s not wanted anymore.
The Oklahoma City Thunder forward reflected deeply on his offseason trade from the New York Knicks to OKC this week in an interview with The New York Times’ Marc Stein. Anthony offered his perspective on the deterioration of his relationship with the Knicks, a juicy quote over the team’s shifting trade demands and insight onto how he finally agreed to wave his no-trade clause in order to switch teams.
“When I signed back with the Knicks, I wanted to be in New York and I believed in Phil (Jackson, the Knicks’ president between March 2013 and June 2017),’’ Anthony said. “Then last year it went to: I was being pushed out. There were things being said about me that I didn’t know where they were coming from. And I still had to go in that gym and play and practice and deal with the media, answer all those questions every day.
“There was no support from the organization,” he said. “When you feel like you’re on your own and then on top of that you feel like you’re being pushed out …”
Anthony insists Phil Jackson, with whom he claims he had just two face-to-face conversations last season, would have traded him “for a bag of chips” if he had remained at the Knicks’ helm.
By the time Jackson left and Scott Perry arrived as Knicks general manager, Anthony had given up on a future in New York. That decision coincided with a spike in their asking price for the 10-time NBA All-Star, cooling interest from the Cleveland Cavaliers and Houston Rockets.
“They went from asking for peanuts to asking for steak,” Anthony laughed.
New York eventually accepted OKC’s offer of Enes Kanter, Doug McDermott and a second-round draft pick in exchange for Anthony, whose 10-year-old son urged him to join Russell Westbrook, Paul George and Co.
“My son has a basketball mind,” Anthony said. “So I will always throw little topics at him. He was like, ‘Dad, where you getting traded to?’ I told him, ‘I don’t know, where do you think I should go?’ He said: ‘You really want me to give you my opinion? I think you should go to O.K.C.’
“It worked out,” Anthony concludes.
The public will find out how well it works Thursday night when the Thunder host the Knicks in their 2017-18 season opener.
Thumbnail photo via Isaiah J. Downing/USA TODAY Sports Images
