This time, Carmelo Anthony is at peace.
That wasn’t the case the first time he contemplated the end of his career, back in November 2018. After a bizarre, head-scratching stint with the Rockets that ended when the team unceremoniously cast him off 10 games into the season, Anthony was forced to confront life without basketball. “I ended up being away from the game for [a year], and that time showed me, Oh, this is what [the end] feels like? Nah, I’m not ready yet,” Anthony says during a car ride on a May afternoon from midtown Manhattan to his childhood neighborhood of Red Hook, Brooklyn. “I knew I still had something to give—that I could help a team if I just got another opportunity.”
Anthony B. Geathers/Sports Illustrated
