Haynes: Carmelo Anthony Knew Teams Questioned His Potential Role

Carmelo Anthony has found at least a temporary home with the Portland Trail Blazers after a year of exile from the NBA. Today Chris Haynes of Yahoo sports delved into Anthony’s absence and the star’s perception of the reasoning behind it.

Haynes starts with a comparison many of Anthony’s contemporaries made over the past year, why the Los Angeles Lakers would employ forward Jared Dudley when Anthony was sitting right there. It was a comparison to which Anthony objected.

“Me and Jared Dudley had some issues in the past, man, but I started feeling bad for him a little bit,” Anthony told Yahoo Sports. “I mean, not feeling bad, but it’s just like, ‘Leave that man alone.’ It’s not his fault. Teams that wanted him, they wanted a specific role, and that’s why they picked him up. I had to tell some guys to lay off. He wasn’t keeping a roster spot from me. That wasn’t the case. The [treatment] he received wasn’t right.”

Later in the extensive article, Haynes quotes Anthony getting to the root of why teams avoided him.

“...it was more so teams not wanting to put themselves in that situation of having to deal with what role I was going to accept and questioning if I was going to accept my role and the media [attention] that’s behind it all,” Anthony told Yahoo Sports. “Just everything that comes along with bringing me in. Nobody knew where I was at, as far as what I was thinking. I think it was more so of everything else outside of basketball. I don’t think anybody thought, ‘Oh, he can’t play anymore. He can’t do this.’ It was everything that had to do with outside of basketball.”

The article features much more about Anthony’s mindset as he re-enters the NBA with Portland.

Anthony has averaged 14.0 points and 5.5 rebounds in two appearances with the Blazers, shooting 34.5% from the floor and 62.5% from the three-point arc.