Carmelo Anthony's one season with the Oklahoma City Thunder couldn't have gone much worse.
He averaged 16.2 points a game on a 40.4 percent shooting percentage -- both easy career lows -- and the trio of Anthony, Russell Westbrook, and Paul George underperformed. After one season, OKC dumped his salary to Atlanta, who plan on buying out his contract.
In a new interview with ESPN, Anthony opened up on what happened in OKC, and how it feels when a team decides to pay you to play somewhere else.
“At the end of the day, it wasn’t a good fit. I think last year—and I haven’t talked about this before—everything was just so rushed, going to the team for media day and the day before training camp. Them guys already had something in place, and then I come along in the 25th hour like, ‘Oh shit, Melo just come on and join us. Like, you can figure it out since you’ve been around the game for a long time," Melo said of OKC. That’s why it was so inconsistent. At times, I had to figure it out on my own rather than somebody over there or people over there helping me.”
He also said he's come to terms with being bought out.
“To get bought out, to get waived, you were looked at like, you’re done. Now, it’s just almost like the norm. If something doesn’t work, go ahead and get a buyout or go ahead and get traded. That’s the new norm in our society in basketball. I had to get over that. I had a conversation with my wife and family. I said to them, I’m not taking no buyout. I’m not getting waived. And they said, at the end of the day, nobody is going to know that. You have to do what you have to do. It’s going to be a blip on your radar. It’s on to the next chapter. It took me a while to get to that point where I’m like, OK, I’m going to accept it.”
Anthony is expected to sign with the Houston Rockets once his buyout is executed. Do you think he'll help the Western Conference runner-ups or will the 34-year old be as much of a non-factor as he was in Oklahoma?
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