Few free agency stories from the mid-2010s have aged as strangely as Carmelo Anthony’s near-move to the Houston Rockets. According to Patrick Beverley, who was part of the team at the time, Melo was seriously considering teaming up with James Harden and Dwight Howard in Houston during the summer of 2014 but one unexpected detail derailed the idea: Jeremy Lin.
On Beverley’s podcast Hoopin’ N Hollerin’, the veteran guard shared an anecdote that offered a surprising glimpse into the behind-the-scenes dynamics of that offseason.
“When Melo was trying to come and negotiate his free agency, he went to a whole bunch of teams, and one of the teams he went to was the Houston Rockets, because we were thinking about getting him, right? It was James Harden, it was Dwight. We got a chance to get Melo, right? And I’m like, damn.”
]”So Melo gets there like, yeah, I’ll come here. I ain’t playing with number seven, though. That’s Jeremy Lin. Remember, the year before, they had all the Linsanity shit. And they were trying to trade Melo to keep J Lin. It was a time when people were talking about, maybe we trade Melo and just give the keys to Jeremy Lin, right? It was a time, a lot of people in New York were saying that.”
The tension between Melo and Lin dates back to their days with the New York Knicks in 2012, when Lin’s sudden breakout, known worldwide as Linsanity, briefly made him the face of the franchise. While fans were swept up in Lin’s underdog rise, there were persistent reports that Anthony wasn’t thrilled with the narrative that Lin had ‘saved’ the Knicks while he was sidelined with injury.
Many in New York’s media speculated that the two stars never fully clicked, and when Lin left for Houston that summer, the rumors of friction followed both men.
Fast forward to 2014, and those feelings clearly lingered. By then, Melo was a perennial All-Star in New York, coming off a 27.4-point season, but he was also frustrated with the Knicks’ lack of progress. Houston, with a prime Harden and a dominant Howard, was one of his strongest suitors. The Rockets even went as far as Photoshopping Melo into a red Houston jersey with the number seven, the same number Lin was wearing at the time.
Ultimately, Melo stayed in New York, signing a five-year, $124 million deal to remain with the Knicks. The Rockets, on the other hand, traded Lin to the Lakers shortly after, clearing cap space for future moves. Four years later, in 2018, Anthony did finally join Houston, but that reunion didn’t go as planned either. He lasted just 11 games, averaging 13.4 points on 40.5% shooting before being traded and later released.
It was a brief, unhappy stint that seemed to confirm what many suspected: the Rockets’ star-driven, pace-and-space system under Mike D’Antoni, the same coach Melo once clashed with in New York, was never going to be a natural fit for him.
Still, Beverley’s revelation adds another wrinkle to the tangled web of mid-2010s NBA drama. For all the talk about fit and culture, sometimes history and a number on a jersey can be enough to derail a potential superteam before it even begins.
