Ever since it was reported last week that Carmelo Anthony cleared waivers and is ready to sign with the Houston Rockets, reports had gone quiet on whether the 10-time All-Star had officially joined the team or not. With many fans wondering why the deal hasn’t been finalized yet, New York Times NBA writer Marc Stein answered a Twitter user’s question on Sunday afternoon and explained the reason behind the lack of developments so far.
As noted by a report from NESN , it has been almost three weeks since Anthony was traded by the Oklahoma City Thunder to the Atlanta Hawks, in a deal that was widely believed to result in the Hawks releasing Anthony and allowing him to become a free agent. That eventually happened a week and a half later, as an NBA website report confirmed on July 30 that the Hawks requested waivers on the 34-year-old forward and added that Anthony would likely sign with the Rockets upon clearing waivers. This was followed by a tweet from ESPN ‘s Adrian Wojnarowski that stated on Tuesday that “Melo” was about to sign a one-year, $2.4 million contract with Houston.
With five days having passed since Wojnarowski’s tweet as of Sunday, hardly anything had been heard regarding Carmelo Anthony and his expected Houston Rockets deal. That changed when the New York Times ‘ Stein responded to a fan on Twitter who was wondering if the signing was still pushing forward and why no new developments had been reported.
“Carmelo Anthony is still very much signing with Houston, as league sources have indicated since July 23, but Melo has been part of the @TheNBPA’s traveling party on the #NBAAfrica trip since clearing waivers last week,” Stein tweeted.
Carmelo Anthony made $5.1M per day as an Atlanta Hawk. pic.twitter.com/5gaLQUcRdL
— ESPN (@espn) July 31, 2018
Although Stein indicated that Anthony is still out of the country as part of the NBA Players Association’s annual NBA Africa Game, he is not part of either one of the two teams’ lineups, as shown in a recent Bleacher Report article. Team Africa features the likes of Joel Embiid, Luol Deng, and other players who were born in Africa or have parents who were born there, while Team World is mostly composed of American players, with the exception of Los Angeles Clippers forward Danilo Gallinari, who was born in Italy.
With Carmelo Anthony still likely to join the Houston Rockets once he returns from the Africa trip, he looks ready to join a team that made it to the Western Conference Finals in the 2018 NBA playoffs, only to lose in seven games to the eventual league champions, the Golden State Warriors. Anthony is coming off his lone season with the Oklahoma City Thunder, where he averaged a career-low 16.2 points in just 32.1 minutes per game.
