Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant are good friends and are also teammates on Team USA for the 2016 Rio Olympics. Anthony also wanted Durant to be his teammate on the Knicks, and lobbied KD to consider the option. Durant however signed with the Golden State Warriors and never even gave the New York Knicks a meeting. Anthony spoke about it after a Team USA practice session.
via NYDN:
“I don’t think you guys know the backstory, but I don’t want to get into all of that, as far as not meeting with us, or meeting with us,” Anthony said on Tuesday. “I don’t want to get into all of those details. We talked. Me and him talked. We were in constant communication.”
Anthony and Durant were training together in New York City in late June and at the time Anthony remarked that he was acting on behalf of the Knicks,which the league does not consider tampering since Anthony is a player.
“We were together, and he made his decision,” Anthony said following Tuesday’s practice with the U.S. national team. “So for anybody to judge that, I think is wrong. He made a decision based off of what he felt was good for himself at this point in time in his career, and he made that.”
“I knew he was meeting with them,” Anthony added. “I knew it was on the schedule. He had to make that decision. That was on him to make that decision. Just from talking to him and being around him, he’s happy, he’s at peace with that decision, and everybody else should be at peace with that decision. If he’s at peace, everybody else should be at peace.”
Though he would’ve been extra happy to have Durant on the Knicks, Anthony has been gushing over his new teammates that Phil Jackson did acquire this offseason. After getting the Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah, Courtney Lee and Brandon Jennings, Anthony called the Knicks a playoff team.
