Credit: totalprosports,com
Carmelo Anthony And Paul George Were Almost Traded To The Cavs On Draft Night
A lot has changed during this year’s NBA offseason. Derrick Rose, Isaiah Thomas and Dwyane Wade are Cavaliers, Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward are Cetlics, Chris Paul is a Rocket, and Paul George and Carmelo Anthony are Thunder.
But apparently, it was close to have ended very differently a few months back.
NBA Draft night 2017, the Cleveland Cavaliers were very close to landing both Paul George and Carmelo Anthony, if we believe Melo himself.
Carmelo Anthony was an interview guest on SiriusXM NBA Radio, and confirmed he and Paul George almost ended up in Cleveland.
“Actually, it was funny because me and PG was supposed to be in Cleveland on draft night. We were communicating about that. The deal was actually done and it got called off on draft night, so me and PG stayed connected throughout the course of the season.”
We knew that the Cavaliers and Pacers almost had a Paul George deal, but there weren’t any rumors for the Knicks to be involved. The third team involved, reportedly were the Nuggets.
We all know that it didn’t work out, but instead of teaming up with PG in Cleveland, Melo is now teaming up with him in Oklahoma City (and a guy named Russell Westbrook who happens to be the league’s MVP). Interestingly enough, the Cavaliers were able to improve their roster nontheless.
After the trade to Clevland wasn’t able to be finalized, most people thought Anthony would join Chris Paul and James Harden in Houston. Apparently, this almost happened as well. Melo explained:
“I think it was within the last week, week and a half, before training camp. A deal was done with Houston early then for some reason whatever happened behind the scenes it didn’t go through, it fell through then we had to really start paying attention and thinking about other options.
But then believe it or not I felt like I was going to be back in training camp and I would show up to media day in New York. Me and my team sat down on Friday night and was like, ‘Man, we best prepare for going back to media day on Monday and training camp that week.’ And then we got the call that said, ‘Would you open it up to OKC?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, at this point yeah.’ I don’t think it would have been beneficial for me to come back to media day after everything that was going on in the offseason. For me to have to deal with that it would have been unfair for the organization, the Knicks, to have to deal with that. It would have been too much noise, too many questions to answer and I don’t think either party wanted to deal with that.”
It’s funny how one trade that didn’t go through changed the entire offseason. A real butterfly effect. But I think that the way it turned out, it is the most exciting scenario for the league, as we now have Cleveland, Oklahoma City, Houston, Boston and San Antonio potentially being able to beat the Warriors.
