Carmelo Anthony will face the Knicks on Tuesday for the first time since 2017, when he was still playing for the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Now, Anthony is a Portland Trail Blazer. His Blazers will welcome the Knicks to the Pacific Northwest on Tuesday night as New York embarks on a road trip out west.
The Knicks are reeling following the dismissal of David Fizdale on Friday, and Anthony had some thoughts about the state of his old team when he spoke to reporters after Portland's loss on Sunday night.
Anthony believes New York missed out on key free agents this past offseason because not every star players has the "mentality" to want "the challenge" of turning the Knicks around.
"There's not too many people who can deal with what comes with that," Anthony told the media. "I don't want to say it's pressure. Everything that comes along with wearing the Knicks across your chest ... I don't think it surprised me. We all read Durant's quotes. We know what he said. Whether you agree with him or not, that just goes to show you people have different perspectives about it … I wanted it. It was something I wanted. I wanted to take that challenge on. Whether I failed at it or not, I wanted to be able to say that I did it. I took it upon myself to say, 'Get me there.' I wanted that challenge. Not everybody had that same mentality."
Anthony, of course, is talking about Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving's decisions to choose Brooklyn over Manhattan this past summer. Durant infamously said afterwards that part of his reasoning in spurning the Knicks was that they "aren't what's cool anymore."
It's not that there isn't hard work to be done in Brooklyn too, but the Knicks are a massive franchise that has been down in the dumps for a long time. Anthony at his peak wasn't able to drag the team past the second round of the NBA Playoffs, and there are organizational issues lurking under the surface that make the job harder than it should be.
The 35-year-old hasn't played for the Knicks since 2017, but he still lives in New York and still watches the team play, even during this latest season of struggling.
"It's hard, man. It's hard for the players to play in that, right? You've got to go out there every night. You're in close games. I watched a lot of the games. They're right there, but they just can't pull it out. You've got to deal with the fans, got to deal with losing, got to deal with trying to keep your sanity out there. It's a lot. You've got to deal with fans saying, 'Sell the team.' That a cloud that's over the organization."
Things haven't gotten better for the Knicks lately, but they have for Anthony. After spending over a year out of the league, the veteran forward was signed by Portland in the midst of an injury crisis. Anthony has played well since joining his new team, and he was even named the Western Conference Player of the Week at the beginning of December.
