Trail Blazers Never Contacted Carmelo Anthony

Carmelo Anthony is no longer a member of the Portland Trail Blazers since signing with the Los Angeles Lakers during the offseason, but he still has love for Portland. Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports sat down with Melo on his podcast, “Posted Up with Chris Haynes.” Haynes and Melo discussed the star’s offseason thus far and where he considered going other than Los Angeles. They also discussed his new memoir, Where Tomorrows Aren’t Promised, which officially released on Tuesday.

Haynes asked Anthony about where he considered going before signing with Los Angeles which led to a conversation about not re-signing with Portland:

“Well to be honest, it was just like, I found myself like sitting around and waiting on Portland, and I was just like you know I don't want to talk to nobody yet and just see what, you know, see what Portland does, you know, see what happens. I was talking to Dame, talking to CJ. You know, we always talk, we don't just talk about that but I was just waiting to see like okay are they gonna call? Are they interested? I haven’t heard anything, do they wanna bring me back? Do they wanna move on? I know they got a new coach. You know I’m sure there was a lot of things that was happening over there that was just not clear. But yeah I was waiting on that to see what was going to happen on that. You know that. I made that almost like a home for me. Like within two years I just felt like I was part of that community.”

Haynes circled back and asked outright, “Did Portland ever get back to you?”

“They didn’t, no, they didn’t get back to me on the way that I thought they were going to get back to me. But again honestly I wasn’t expecting it.”

“I didn’t want to leave Dame, I didn’t want to leave CJ and those guys. I know the business of the game, I know the business of sports. I know what it is, Chris. I know the inside.”

Haynes ends the podcast referencing Damian Lillard being at a crossroads at the end of the season and asking Anthony what his conversations with the Lillard were like.

“Listen you know me and Dame friendship so you know we speak all the time. It never was like, our conversation was never like, ‘man I’m getting out of here’ you know what I’m saying? You know, like Dame is Portland. And it will always be Portland. The next person gonna have to do a lot, you know what I’m sayin, to be where Dame is at in Portland. And that’s his town, that’s his city, that’s his organization. I get it. I’m coming from, I’m coming to him as somebody whose been in that situation, a couple times, not just one. A couple times in different places. So we’ve never talked about him leaving. He’s never talked about leaving. What he talked about is, I wanna win, and I wanna do it here in Portland but if it’s not gonna work, it’s not gonna work. And I think that’s the battle that he deals with. He wanna win, and he wanna be in Portland. He want—as Portland is his. But I know he’s thinking, am I gonna win here. Everybody else is saying the same thing. But it’s more so the outside noise than anything else. You know it wasn’t like we was discussing it all the time. Yeah I gave him advice and you know we don't got to speak on that or the things that we talked about. But it’s more the outside world that’s like, ‘Well Dame should leave and he should go here and he should go there you know they putting him on different uniforms and the guy’s still under contract! You know he never asked for a trade, he never asked to do this, he never asked to do that.”

You can listen to the rest of Carmelo Anthony’s interview on Chris Haynes’ podcast, “Posted up with Chris Haynes” anywhere you listen to podcasts.