Carmelo Anthony's sour exit from the Big Apple after a nightmarish last couple of seasons was a transition in the making for the latter of his six-and-a-half seasons with the New York Knics — a transition that proved tough, not only contractually, but on a personal level.
“You pay attention to New York sports as a whole,” Carmelo said Tuesday, according to Berry Tramel of The Oklahoman. “If you allow it, it'll eat you alive. It's something I always said, ‘man, how do people deal with that?'”
The spotlight in the mecca of basketball is as intense and intimidating as advertised, a constant maximum focal length zoomed into the soul of athletes wearing orange and blue — constantly scrutinizing every bad shot and every questionable decision made on and off the court.
A front office, at that time led by the shaky leadership of Phil Jackson, that had started to change its mind about Carmelo Anthony's potential as the leader of the team made things even more difficult for the prolific scorer, fighting not only the press, but his own governing franchise.
“It was tense,” Carmelo said. “Very tense situation. It was challenging from a mental standpoint to try to still go out there and play at a high level. Try to lock everything out. Try to gather the guys on the team.
“It made me really understand who I am. How much I can handle as a person, mentally, physically, emotionally. But I got through it. Somehow, some way, I got through it.”
As such, Carmelo Anthony was hellbent on a trade to the Houston Rockets over the summer that never materialized, ultimately opening his options to other teams in hope of finally escaping all the unwanted attention that awaited him on the Knicks' Media Day, doing so by a mere two days after being traded to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
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