Carmelo Anthony signed a one-year deal with the Los Angeles Lakers in free agency this year.
The move caught some, like Damian Lillard, by surprise given how warmly Anthony had spoken about his time in Portland. Anthony initially attempted to downplay what happened, but then decided to get brutally honest about it this week.
“Well to be honest, I was just waiting to see what Portland does, you know, I was talking to Dame, talking to CJ, you know, are they going to call, are they interested? I hadn’t heard anything like do they wanna bring me back, do they want me to move on, there was a new coach…so there was just a lot of things happening over there that weren’t clear,” Anthony told Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports.
Anthony then went on to say that the Blazers didn’t even bother getting back to him in a timely fashion.
“They didn’t get back to me like the way I thought they were going to get back to me,” he noted. “There’s no loyalty in sports, but that’s just the way it is, and I felt loyal to Portland. I didn’t wanna leave Dame, I didn’t wanna leave CJ, but I know this is just the business of the game.”
It will be interesting to see if Anthony is ultimately able to drown out the noise and perform at a high level this year. If he does, he might finally claim that elusive first career NBA title. If he doesn’t, his last and best opportunity to ever win a chip will likely go out the window.
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