In an appearance on the ‘7PM In Brooklyn’ podcast, Paul George sat down with his former teammate Carmelo Anthony in a revealing conversation. In reflection on their time together on the Thunder, the two stars explained what went wrong and why they could never live up to expectations.
Carmelo Anthony: “I didn’t have no role in OKC, no role it was ‘Melo you gon figure it out” and I was like nah I can’t figure sh*t out. What you want me to do?’ I’m taking darts and I’m the 4th man on the team. I still know what I can do, let’s keep this sh*t going. They wanted me to come off the bench and shift my contract, I was ready to come off the bench the next season. We lost in the playoffs and they looked at us crazy. We get 3 years together who knows what happens.”
Paul George: “I thought the whole process was rushed, I was expecting that we were building something here. We got a trio, we saw what it looks like, and now we have a full training camp next year. I just thought it was rushed and too soon. We were only 1 year in.”
In the final stretch of Russell Westbrook’s tenure on the Thunder, they traded for Carmelo Anthony in one last move to contend for a title. With the three of them, the hope was that the Thunder could at least challenge the elites but everything fell apart when they lost in the 2018 playoffs.
Anthony was coming off his worst statistical season in years at 16.2 points per game on just 40% shooting and things got ugly for him as the season went on. While there is no doubt something had to change that summer, both George and Anthony disagree with how it all went down.
Without warning or notice, the Thunder traded Carmelo to the Hawks after just 78 games, making him a free agent and leading him to sign a deal with the Houston Rockets.
The Thunder still finished 4th in the West that season and had they gotten more time together, the case can be made that they might have been able to go even higher in the 2017-19 campaign.
Unfortunately, they pulled the plug on the whole experiment and Paul George would eventually leave one season later to join forces with Kawhi Leonard on the Clippers. Westbrook would also leave his former team behind… but they have recovered well.
The Thunder are better off now than ever before. After securing the first seed and winning two playoff rounds, they are in a position to prosper in the West for years to come. Their young core of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Chet Holmgren is among the best in the league.
So while the Thunder did make some tough decisions with their recent stars, it turned out to be the right move to set them on a better future. George has a chance to do the same with the 76ers this season but they’ll have to give him the time and the space he needs to properly adjust.
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