Carmelo Anthony has been plenty busy, meeting with five teams in the first three days of free agency. He doesn’t have a visit on the agenda today as he takes the holiday weekend to decide where to play next season, but there’s still chatter surrounding the perennial All-Star. Here’s the latest:
- The Knicks already appeared to be leading the ‘Melo sweepstakes, and Thursday’s meeting between Anthony and the team only upped New York’s chances, sources tell Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. Team president Phil Jackson cleared any doubt about the strength of his desire to have Anthony re-sign and the star forward left the meeting mostly sharing the Zen Master’s vision for the club’s future, Wojnarowski hears.
- A brief hello was all there was to Derrick Rose‘s participation in the Bulls‘ recruiting pitch to Anthony on Tuesday, according to Chris Broussard of ESPN.com. Most other reports indicated that Rose had a somewhat larger presence, speaking to ‘Melo for 15 to 20 minutes in the locker room, as K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune notes via Twitter. The Bulls never asked him to formally take part in its presentation, but he would have done so if they had, as Broussard details.
- Anthony and Kobe Bryant aren’t as close as most dispatches make it seem, a person who knows both well tells Ken Berger of CBSSports.com.