After starting his NBA comeback with the Portland Trail Blazers earlier this season, Carmelo Anthony is unsure if he’s going to finish it.
Anthony, who played just 10 games last season before being released by the Houston Rockets, told TNT’s Ernie Johnson he is undecided about taking part in the NBA’s restarted season in Orlando at the end of July.
“As far as actually playing and going back down into Orlando, I’m still up in the air a little bit because I really don’t, we don’t have all the details,” the 36-year-old said. “We don’t know a lot of information, so until we have that, it’s hard to just commit to that 100 percent.”
#NBATogether with Ernie Johnson (@TurnerSportsEJ) begins now with 10x NBA All-Star @carmeloanthony. #NBAVoices https://t.co/xn5EMB0Pov
— NBA (@NBA) June 10, 2020
According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, Anthony is not the only player who is conflicted about being quarantined in the league’s bubble at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports at Disney World.
Wojnarowski reports there have been conference calls with 40 to 50 players over the past few days to discuss concerns pertaining to the 22-team restart in Orlando, but the National Basketball Players Association has not received any formal complaints about the plan.
“As players have started to come to terms with the restrictive and isolated nature of the Orlando bubble — including no visitors until after the first round of the playoffs, nearly seven weeks after the opening of mid-July training camp — there has been increased dialogue about the prudence of restarting the season for a number of players, especially those on non-championship contenders,” according to Wojnarowski.
The Blazers and Anthony are currently in ninth place in the Western Conference and would fall into the category of non-championship contenders because, even if they are somehow able to play themselves into eighth place to secure the conference’s final playoff spot, they will likely be cannon fodder for LeBron James and the Lakers in the first round of the postseason.
That said, it would still be nice to see Anthony, who was named Player of the Week for the first time since March of 2014 back in December, and his team give it a go in Orlando.
Players who sit out games will not be paid, but that may not matter much to Anthony as he is only making the veteran’s minimum this season. The former Syracuse champ, who is averaging 15.3 points per game on 43 percent shooting this season, has until mid-July when training camps begin to make up his mind about whether he’s going to report or not.
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