Carmelo Anthony choose the New York Knicks this offseason and says the Chicago Bulls were the only other team he was considering. Anthony said it was his faith in Phil Jackson, not the money, that swayed him back to the Big Apple.
Melo spoke to ESPN.com and said that he was caught up in the free agency buzz and kept chaining his mind after visiting a new team.
"I was flip-flopping," he admitted. "It was hard. It was Chicago, but then after I met with L.A., it was L.A. But it came back to Chicago -- and was pretty much always Chicago or New York. That's a situation where I could have walked in now to an opportunity to compete for the next however many years.”
Anthony said that he thinks the Knicks are much closer to competing than people say and that Phil Jackson can lead the team into the championship conversation.
"It's a matter of me believing in the organization, believing in Phil," Anthony said. "I wanted to go somewhere where I can end my career."
"I want to win. I don't care about the money," Anthony said"I believe Phil will do what he has to do to take care of that."
"I don't think we're that far away," he added. "People use 'rebuilding' too loosely.”
Under Jackson’s watch, the Knicks go into 2014-15 with a whole new cast of players. The Knicks added the likes Jose Calderon, Samuel Dalembert, Shane Larkin and Wayne Ellington while doing away with Tyson Chandler and Raymond Felton.
The Knicks still have a bunch of money coming off the books at the end of next season and will be able to be more active in free agency. With the likes of Kevin Love, Kevin Durant and many others becoming free agents in the coming years, Jackson could build the Knicks up in his image very soon.
[ESPN]
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