When Carmelo Anthony’s New York Knicks tenure was winding down, there was reportedly one official who tried to sway him towards staying.
Carmelo Anthony‘s days in a New York Knicks uniform ended weeks before the 2017-18 season. His relationship with the organization fell apart during the Phil Jackson years and a divorce seemed inevitable by the end.
However, according to SNY’s Ian Begley, there was an attempt by one Knicks staffer to convince Melo to reconsider his desire to be traded.
“One high-ranking Knicks official visited Anthony in person prior to the trade to Oklahoma City to ask him to reconsider his stance and stay with the Knicks, per SNY sources,” Begley wrote.
“Obviously that Knicks official – one of the few on solid terms with Anthony at the time – was rebuffed. The feeling from Anthony then was that it was time to part ways after everything that happened over the past year with he and team president Phil Jackson, per sources.”
The Melo trade to the Oklahoma City Thunder was just over two years ago, but it feels like so much longer. There isn’t a single Knick who Anthony played with during his time in New York. Frank Ntilikina and Damyean Dotson, the two longest-tenured players on the roster, were drafted months before the Melo trade went down.
Melo, on the other hand, is now playing with his third team since the Knicks and seems to have finally found a home after the stops with the Thunder and the Houston Rockets ended in failure.
The Knicks will play Anthony and the Portland Trail Blazers on Tuesday night in the Moda Center (10 p.m. ET).
