Carmelo Anthony: ‘A deal was done with Houston,’ but ‘it didn’t go through’

Carmelo Anthony told SiriusXM Radio Wednesday he thought “a deal was done with Houston” this summer, but “it didn’t go through.”

Anthony was ultimately traded by the Knicks to the Oklahoma City Thunder, where he’s now teaming up with Russell Westbrook and Paul George to make a run at the Golden State Warriors.

In the interview with Joel Meyers and Antonio Daniels of Sirius, Anthony also said there would’ve been “too much noise” had he showed up at Knicks training camp this week, so he expanded his list of potential landing spots to include Oklahoma City and Cleveland, along with Houston.

Meyers: “At what point, Melo, did you expand your list when you realized we have to come to a conclusion here?”

Anthony: “I think it was within the last week, week and a half, before training camp. A deal was done with Houston early then for some reason whatever happened behind the scenes it didn’t go through, it fell through then we had to really start paying attention and thinking about other options. But then believe it or not I felt like I was going to be back in training camp and I would show up to media day in New York. Me and my team sat down on Friday night and was like, ‘Man, we best prepare for going back to media day on Monday and training camp that week.’ And then we got the call that said, ‘Would you open it up to OKC?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, at this point yeah.’ I don’t think it would have been beneficial for me to come back to media day after everything that was going on in the offseason. For me to have to deal with that it would have been unfair for the organization, the Knicks, to have to deal with that. It would have been too much noise, too many questions to answer and I don’t think either party wanted to deal with that.”

The Knicks last Friday said they expected Anthony to be at Media Day on Monday and training camp beginning Tuesday, but the deal with Oklahoma City materialized late Friday and into Saturday, when the news was first reported by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.

“So Friday evening, Friday night into Saturday morning early hours, things really picked up with the Oklahoma City Thunder and we felt at that time that there was going to be something there and to our point all along that it was going to make a little sense for us as a basketball organization, made some sense for Carmelo as well, and so we acted upon that,” Knicks GM Scott Perry said Monday.

“So we sit here today with a trade we felt that by getting back two 25-year-old players in Enes Kanter and Doug McDermott, both who have some solid skill sets. Enes is a young man who has proven that he can score the basketball on the interior, ranked in the top five of players in the league in terms of his ability to score off the bench. He displayed that in Oklahoma City. Obviously, Doug McDermott has ability to make shots from three point range. And we were also able to acquire a very valuable draft asset. We felt the timing was right and what we were going to get back was something we could work with in a positive manner.”