Rockets news: Carmelo Anthony doesn't care if people think he should come off the bench

Superstar Houston Rockets small forward Carmelo Anthony doesn't care that people believe he should come off the bench or play the four.

Since his arrival in Houston, there has been a lot of discussion about what role Carmelo Anthony will have with the Rockets. Most of the talk centers around the idea that he might come off the bench.

Interestingly, it seems that Anthony is okay with that role as long as it results in winning. As some might remember, Anthony was not very receptive to the idea of coming off the bench for the Oklahoma City Thunder last season when they had a poor start to the season.

In an interview, Anthony talks about he he got “caught up” in other people's opinions. Here's a snippet from an article from the Boston Herald:

“(People saying) Oh, he's a stretch 4,” Anthony said. “Oh, he should come off the bench. Oh, he should not shoot this many times. Oh, he should just let Russ (Westbrook) do this. So, it was just so much of that that was … going around that I had to block it out and get away from it and not even think about it.”

But even after he figured out how to do that, he still had to handle all of those who professed to know things about him when they had no clue what was really happening.

“I don't really care about somebody telling me how I think,” he said. “A lot of people that's talking about me or has an opinion don't really know who I am. Never talked to me before. Don't know how I think. So, it's funny to me to just hear a quote from somebody else saying: ‘He feels like this or he feels like that. And he should do this, or he should do that. Or he even said this or said that.'”

It will be interesting how Rockets head coach Mike D'Antoni will make use of Carmelo Anthony's skillset. If they start him, he will surely have to play off the ball which is a role he thrived in during his stints for Team USA. If he comes off the bench, he can be the primary playmaker for the second unit and make use of his one-on-one skills. Coach D'Antoni is already excited of the possibilities:

“He's a great basketball player, so we just try to make it optimal for him and us,” D'Antoni said. “It's always a little bit of a challenge, but if you had asked me the same question (last year) about James and Chris I would have said the same thing: ‘Well, it looks good. I'm excited.' So same thing with him.”