Carmelo Anthony is going to be coming off the bench this season for the Houston Rockets, ending his long streak of starting every game of his NBA career.
Anthony has been a starter his whole basketball life, dating back to his AAU days. So the veteran scorer knows it’s going to be an adjustment for him, one which will take the majority of the season to get used to.
“It’s hard. I haven’t even got myself mentally prepared to think like that,” Anthony said, via Jonathan Feigen of The Houston Chronicle. “It’s even hard to think like that now. If it happens, it happens. This is a long season. All types of ups and downs are going to happen through the course of the season. If it happens, I guess everybody was a genius, then.
“Ask me in March. I’ll probably have a different answer for you. It’s an adjustment, more so a mental adjustment than a physical adjustment. That would be the most challenging part, shifting your mindset, shifting the way you approach the beginning of the game. The approach to the game is pretty much the same, but you’re three, four minutes behind now.”
Rockets head coach Mike D’Antoni is going to stagger Anthony and P.J. Tucker this season since both players play the same position. Tucker will start for Houston, and then Anthony will come in for Tucker, who is the superior defender.
Anthony, who signed a one-year, $2.4 million deal with Houston, was coached by D’Antoni with the New York Knicks. The two had a murky relationship back then, and D’Antoni resigned from his post during the 2011-12 season because he was unable to get Anthony to buy into his style.
D’Antoni and Anthony, however, have since patched things up, and the Rockets coach believes Anthony is a good addition to the team even though Melo had a rough season last year with the Oklahoma City Thunder. Anthony averaged a career-low 16.2 points per game with the Thunder and shot only 40.4 percent from the field and 35.7 percent from beyond the arc.
Carmelo Anthony and sharpshooter Eric Gordon will bring firepower off the Rockets’ bench this season. Houston is considered by many to be the only team which can compete with the Golden State Warriors in the Western Conference.
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