“The only sure thing is that Carmelo Anthony has outlived his usefulness in New York.” Basketball writer and journalist Charley Rosen’s take against Melo showed how blunt and ruthless the media could be. While this is something that most athletes have to face at some point in their career, the criticism had a negative impact on Anthony, not limited to his game. La La Anthony once admitted that all the media scrutiny affected her marriage. Now, it turns out the very same media also might’ve been the reason behind the delay in one of Melo’s major ventures.
As revealed by the former New York Knicks star on 7PM in Brooklyn, he could’ve never thought of entering the podcast game while he was still an active athlete. “No, because I didn’t like talking to the media… I was just locked,” Anthony said. However, it’s not as if he had issues with the media from the start of his NBA journey. In fact, he was quite comfortable with the media when he was in Denver.
“It was a couple media people in the locker room… Smaller market, I’m growing up with the success of the organization, with the media, with the city. So it’s like you don’t really have to deal with a lot of it,” he said. Yes, there were occasional instances of a journalist poking on to get some juicy story out but Carmelo Anthony gets that while he was growing as a player, Denver media, too, was evolving. However, it was all a completely different story when Anthony landed with the New York Knicks.
One of the first advice he got? To not read or listen to the New York media. “And from that moment, I started going through it. I started observing who was what in the media scrum. So now you understand how to approach each individual media personality… So that’s why I’ve never went back and forth with the media in New York. Cause I just knew the game and then I knew the people who were saying it and. And the people that wasn’t saying it…,” Melo said on 7 PM in Brooklyn.
If you followed Carmelo Anthony’s time in New York, you already know it was never easy. The media was relentless: taking shots at his leadership, questioning his fit, and always pointing at the team’s lack of playoff results. And when Phil Jackson, then the team’s president, started chiming in with his own jabs, it only poured fuel on the fire.
One tweet from Jackson in 2017 stood out, when he shared a Bleacher Report column that questioned Anthony’s desire to win. The column basically said the Knicks couldn’t want success for him more than he wanted it for himself. Through all of this, however, Melo never clapped back.
“For me, it was just about really learning the landscape of how to navigate in New York,” Melo said. And once he figured it out, something in him shifted. ” Once I got it to his point, I was like, f*ck it. My mentality changed because I was like, f*ck it. What I’m going to do is I’m just show up now… I’m going to speak to you all every single day… I might be upset, but I’m still going to respect you all at the end of the day.”
That growth didn’t happen overnight. But now, with over 378,000 fans tuning into his podcast, it’s clear—Melo found his voice. However, as mentioned before, it was not just the work-life where Anthony was facing challenges because of the media. His personal life suffered too. To the extent of La La Anthony parting ways with Melo.
La La Anthony revealed how media scrutiny affected her marriage with Carmelo Anthony
It was a year after officially filing for divorce that La La reflected on what she believes played a big role in the unraveling of their relationship. While chatting on the Call Her Daddy podcast, La La recalled a major shift that started when Melo was traded from the Denver Nuggets to the New York Knicks in 2011.
That move didn’t just bring basketball attention—it brought a floodlight onto their personal lives. “When we lived here [in New York] under all of that, that’s when things became complicated,” she admitted during the podcast. “Now that I look back, that was kind of the start of the demise of the marriage.”
La La didn’t sugarcoat it further. “It is the hardest with the scrutiny and the media and the press, just everything.” The never-ending attention clearly wore them down. While La La made it clear that this wasn’t the only reason things fell apart, La La acknowledged how much harder everything became once they were living in the New York spotlight. It’s clear that Carmelo Anthony has suffered quite a lot because of media scrutiny and pressure.
The post 4 Years After Divorce from La La, Carmelo Anthony Reveals Similar Reason Led to Delay in 370k Fan Favorite Venture appeared first on EssentiallySports.
