Carmelo Anthony’s time with the Houston Rockets has all but come to a close. It has been fairly stunning how quickly things have soured in Houston given how aggressively they pursued the former scoring champ over the summer.
Still, when it’s not working, it’s not working, and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone that would tell you Anthony has appeared to be a good fit with the Rockets, even if he’s not actively disrupting anything beyond his struggles on the court. For a team with championship aspirations, Houston doesn’t seem too keen on trying to make things work and would rather move on and open up that roster spot to find an upgrade elsewhere.
General manager Daryl Morey addressed rumors of Anthony’s impending departure and said he really is sick and expected him to play when healthy, but there’s so much smoke, from so many different reporters, that it seems all but inevitable — ESPN’s Tim McMahon reported on Sunday night that players in Houston felt that Anthony had played his final game with the Rockets.
On Monday, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski followed that up with a report that Anthony’s camp was already reaching out to front offices around the league in hopes of finding his next team while they work with the Rockets on his exit. Woj notes the difficulty for Anthony and his camp is that it’s tough for teams to create roster space at this point of the season, so Anthony may have to wait before signing as teams work to make room for him and his minimum deal.
Beyond that, there remains the question of Anthony’s usefulness for a contender, because the only teams that will be interested in him will be those that could possibly see him as a player that can help them in a postseason run. That was the plan in Houston, but his offensive abilities, which are certainly still there in spurts, weren’t able to offset his negative impact on the defensive end.
The teams being thrown around by oddsmakers as the likely landing spots for Anthony are the Blazers, Sixers, and Lakers, which all make sense on some level — all of them are capped out and could use veteran help — but all have to be a bit fearful that what happened in Houston could happen to them. Anthony wasn’t the main problem in Houston, but he certainly wasn’t a solution and his presence can be a distraction simply by trying to make him fit.
This is why waiting it out could be best for Anthony, because as the season wears on teams will have better ideas about what they need, and injuries can always pop up to create new needs and opportunities on rosters.
