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Carmelo Anthony Opens Up About His End With The Houston Rockets

These past few seasons haven’t really been ideal for Carmelo Anthony.

After a rough year in Oklahoma City, Melo was traded to the Atlanta Hawks in a three-way deal, but never played a minute for the Hawks, and was bought out of his contract. Houston then signed him and was hopeful that he could improve their team.

That only lasted a couple of weeks, before Carmelo Anthony’s services were no longer required in Houston. Melo hasn’t played an NBA game ever since. He was the easy scapegoat for how subpar and dysfunctional the Rockets were. Anthony though, never really talked about the situation, until now.

Carmelo joined Stephen A. Smith for an exclusive interview on First Take and discussed his departure from the Houston Rockets.

“It went from ‘oh, this is the piece that we want. This is the piece that we need.’ Mind you, we’re even talking for three years, four years, they were trying to get me to come to the Houston Rockets. And I finally went there, they finally said ‘OK, this is the piece that we need.’

So I get there and I’m thinking that everything is good, I’m doing everything I got to do. Never missed a practice, did all my work. I was real professional about it there. I don’t think there is one person that could say I wasn’t a professional there. I did what I had to do. Did my work. And then the 10th game comes, I just didn’t understand where that come from.

I actually reached out to Daryl first and said ‘can we talk about how we can make this better? What can we do to fix this? What can I do to fix this?’ But then he had in mind that he wanted to come talk to me too, about releasing me and letting me go. I didn’t like how that went down.”

The actual situation of Morey letting Melo know that they wouldn’t need him anymore came in his hotel room, while Anthony was preparing for the Rockets’ game in San Antonio:

“I was actually in San Antonio, in my room, getting ready for the game. Me and Daryl were supposed to speak that night, because I had reached out to him previously about just a heads up meeting. What’s going on? Let me know what I can do. I’m here to help the team, like, let me know what I gotta do. But he came in and was just like ‘look, basically your services are no longer needed.’

And I’m like, hold up, what the hell are you talking about? But he’s like… ‘things are just not working out, and you’ve got to figure out something to do.’ I’m like ‘how the hell am I going to figure something out to do? I got a game tomorrow!’ ‘Nah, you’re not going to suit up tomorrow.”