And so the fallout begins...

[Quagmire]

How many more players are going to come out and voice their frustration? Hopefully Amare will use this summer as an inner motivation and quell the immaturity by association rumors.


http://msn.foxsports.com/story/2919428




Anthony felt depressed and alone in Athens


Carmelo Anthony spent many nights at the Olympics in his hotel room depressed and wanting to go home.




The Denver Nuggets star was demoted to the bench during the Athens Games, in which the NBA players lost three times and finished with the bronze medal.

"I would play my (video) games, and hope and pray that it would be over with," he said in Friday's editions of The Denver Post. "I was in my little funk. I didn't want to be involved with nobody."

The former Syracuse star said things started going wrong for him in the first game, a 92-73 loss to Puerto Rico.

"People were looking at me like I was selfish and I was only thinking about myself," he said.

He said getting benched was a shock after being a high school All-American, an NCAA champion with Syracuse as a freshman and a rookie standout with the Nuggets.

"That would affect anybody," Anthony told the newspaper. "I'm not saying I'm the greatest player in the world, but I've never sat on nobody's bench."

He said he respects coach Larry Brown, whose Detroit Pistons won the NBA title this year, but thinks the U.S. team would have done better if it played looser.

"He still makes mistakes," Anthony said. "We weren't the Detroit Pistons. We didn't have 90 games to play together. We had two weeks." Still, Anthony said he would like to play in the 2008 Olympics. "I got unfinished business to take care of," he said.

 

[green machine]

Carmelo is a jackass.

 

[DevonCardsFan]

Carmelo is a jackass.

 

[Chris_Sanders]

Well again...

I appreciate despite the fact he was depressed by all the negativity being slung at him and Team USA...he is already committing to go next time.

For free.

Some of you need to relax.

 

[thegrahamcrackr]

I am glad he is committing to go again. However, that could change in 4 years (hopefully it wont).


Doesn't mean I have to like the kid though.

 

[scotsman13]

of course anthony felt alone. whenever he was on the court he played alone. sure this guys can score but after that i have seen nothing and i do mean nothing that even gives me the idea that he is even worth the 17th pick in the draft last year.


until he finds a cure for foot in month he is going to keep putting it in it.

 

[cepstrum]

Well again...

I appreciate despite the fact he was depressed by all the negativity being slung at him and Team USA...he is already committing to go next time.

For free.

Some of you need to relax.

I know what you're saying chris, but it should be an honor to represent your country. As much as I dont like the way AI plays sometimes, his attitude about the olympics has been great. Money shouldnt be an issue (besides these guys got the royal treatment. They lived in an absolutely sick sick yacht the whole time).

I dont really think that anyone is being too hard on Anthony. IMO, the guy is a grade A jackass. Ever since he talked about how he deserved to be on the all star team more than kirilenko, I've had doubts about him and these olympics havent helped his cause. I'm not saying that Larry Brown was right in calling him out, but either way, anthony should've handled the situation better. As far as the next olympics go, we'll see if he plays or not. If he's still the same way, I would rather he didnt get an invitation, but if he grows up Im sure he would help.

Oh and BTW, I'd take Kirilenko over Anthony any day of the week. No questions asked

 

[mribnik]

by "hotel room" they are referring to the Queen Mary II correct? I was actually on the Queen Mary II before it got to athens (we got off in Rome, didn't want to deal with the Olympics). That boat is amazing, how could you want to go home? Unlimited, and great food. entertainment, movies, games, casinos etc. etc. etc.

 

[Lars the Red]

"I would play my (video) games, get massages, take champagne baths, and hope and pray that it would be over with," he said in Friday's editions of The Denver Post.

Tough life.

Read these comments, then consider some of the others that have played for Team USA.

He said getting benched was a shock after being a high school All-American, an NCAA champion with Syracuse as a freshman and a rookie standout with the Nuggets.

He said getting benched was the right thing for the team and helped get the right players on the floor after being a High School All-American, an NCAA runner-up with Indiana State, a Rookie of the Year in the NBA, and recognized as one of the greatest players ever and definite Hall of Famer.

Same could be said for Magic, or any other of the first Team USA players.

I appreciate despite the fact he was depressed by all the negativity being slung at him and Team USA...he is already committing to go next time.

Oh no, it's not that easy next time. I don't care who they pick to go as long as they understand what kind of sacrifice they have to be willing to make to mesh with the team and that they represent the country in a respectful and enthusiastic manner. A guy can do a great deal of growing up in 4 years, but that's exactly what has to happen for him to get another opportunity to play again. If he's a spoiled little egomaniac 4 years from now, I don't care if he's scoring 40 a night, he stays home.

 

[Cheesebeef]

of course anthony felt alone. whenever he was on the court he played alone. sure this guys can score but after that i have seen nothing and i do mean nothing that even gives me the idea that he is even worth the 17th pick in the draft last year.

dude - whatever it is you're smoking - please pass it this way. Between this statement, your almost assured stand that Kobe Bryant was going to jail and that Houston won't even make the playoffs - I gotta believe you should change yourname to Amsterdamman13.

that being said - I do think Anthony has become much more of a jackass than I thought he was before the Olympics.

 

[Gee!]

"That would affect anybody," Anthony told the newspaper. "I'm not saying I'm the greatest player in the world, but I've never sat on nobody's bench."

Well, this is the best of the best. On those other teams he was never benched on he was the best player on that team.

Amare got benched, didnt seem to affect him, like Anthony thinks it would anyone.

And go fix your braids girly-boy.

 

[Joe Mama]

Carmelo and he made his way onto my shi*list with his ignorant comments when he was left off of the Western Conference All-Star team last year. Since then he has only made his way closer to the top of that list. At present he is hanging right there at the top with Gary Payton and Karl Malone. In fact if he keeps this up you'll probably be my #1 most hated player by the start of the 2004-05 season.

This guy is just the epitome of the young, prima donna players that are so disliked by the average NBA fan. I can't believe nobody in the Denver management has told him to just keep his mouth shut yet. He was the one who cried about not being invited to the Olympics originally. What did he think? Did he honestly believe he was going to be one of the last players asked to play, and he was going to play big minutes?

Originally I defended the criticism aimed at Anthony on this message board because I thought it was unfair, and some people were focusing all of their attention on him looking for mistakes. I actually think he played well during the preliminaries. However once it came to the actual Olympics his defense was awful, and his offense wasn't much better. Then he opened his mouth.

I didn't like the way Larry Brown constantly complained to the media about his players and his team, but I didn't mind it when it came to Anthony. That is because Anthony started it with the media. He is the one who was first complaining about his minutes. At this point I don't even want to see him on the 2008 Olympic team. He may be a good NBA player, but he represents a good part of what is wrong with the MBA NBA today.

Joe Mama

 

[devilalum]

He's just about locked up a spot on the all time Whiners list.

Someone needs to tell this guy you earn respect. It isn't given to you.

And what you did in high school doesn't count for nothin in the NBA.

 

[baltimorer]

Carmello Anthony didn't handle this Olympic experience very well at all. Being part of a team with so much talent on it, he should've understood that playing time could be scarce and he should've been more positive about it.

That being said, if you can't at least understand where he is coming from, then you're not being fair at all. In that article, he said he had a meeting with Larry Brown, the outcome of which he believed was positive, and then the very next day he was singled out and chastised by the same Larry Brown. Explain that. And the bottom line is that Coach Brown did not need to say anything to the media about his players. If he had a problem with Melo or anybody else on the team, he should've gotten that point across to his team, not to the Newspapers. Considering the fact that he was dealing with a 20 year old young man, he should've had the maturity to be the bigger man, but he couldn't do that. It seems to me, a lot of Larry Brown's media criticisms were to clarify his view that the first losses in Olympic play in 20 years had nothing to do with his inefficiancies as a coach. That may indeed be true, but constantly reiterating to the media every flaw and weakness of the team isn't really being an outstanding team member either. Don't forget, when it really comes down to it, Melo never said anything bad about Larry Brown, whereas it seemed like at times LB couldn't wait for opportunities to rip into his players, Carmello Anthony getting the brunt of such rantings. Still, Melo said in the end he had the upmost respect for Coach Brown.

For some reason, a very large amount of people wanted to see this team fail. The Men's USA Basketball Team had a payroll well over $100 million going to what a lot of people saw as young, arogant, cocky black kids who didn't play with the heart that other teams from other countries played with, and a lot of people were bothered by this. And then, as people often do, they began searching for a central figure to represent all the problems with Team USA as a sort of way to justify such an unpatriotic, otherwise deplorable act as rooting against your own country in anything. When Melo began moping a little bit over playing time, it probably seemed to him like his entire country turned on him. The very place he jumped at the opportunity to support had just as quickly alienated him in mid-air. I know it sounds a little dramatic, but it's not difficult for a 20-year old to lose a little perspective.

The point of this post isn't to take all guilt away from Carmello, but I'm just trying to say that there are two sides to this story and to totally negate the validity of Melo's seems a bit unfair. He made a few mistakes, handled a few situations poorly, and it effected his Olympic experience poorly. But when nearly 20 NBA players decided they had better things to do than defend the pride of our great nation, he was one of the few that jumped at the opportunity. After all, considering Larry Brown's extremely suspect substitution patterns (Emeka Okafor over Amare Stoudemire at times???), it's hard for me to fault Melo for wanting some PT.

And Melo, at 21.0 points, 6.1 boards and 2.8 assists, should've been an all-star over Andre Kirilenko.

 

[George O'Brien]

Welcome aboard baltimorer.

I was very unhappy with Larry Brown, but Carmelo did not play well when he had a chance. There is plenty of blame going both ways.

I have to disagree about taking Carmelo over Kirilenko. Yes, Carmelo scored more, 21 pppg compared to 16.5 ppg; but that's not the whole story.

Kirilenko played on team with a lot less talent than the Nuggets, especially after Harpring was injured yet finished only one game behind the Nuggets. Anthony scored 21 ppg (42.3% shooting), but was on a team that averaged 97.2 ppg.

Kirilenko averaged 16.6 ppg (44.3% shooting) on a team that averaged only 88.7 ppg. In any case, what really stands out with Kirilenko was his defensive statistics: 8.1 rpg, 1.92 steals per game, and 2.76 blocks per game. He ranked 3rd in the NBA for blocks and fourth in steals.

If I was putting together a team, I'd take Kirilenko over Anthony.

 

[Southpaw]

Just goes to show what a waste of life some of these morons are. A chance to see one of the most beautiful countries and cultures in the world, but he stays in his crib and plays "Gameboy/Playstation. These BB clowns are so narrow they wouldn't know a worldly opportunity if it bit them on the ass. Some of the Americans swimmers reported the Olympic Village social life was unbelievable, but this ass clown couldn't find his way around the corner. Just another immature punk who can't buy his own underwear withot his posse.

 

[scotsman13]

dude - whatever it is you're smoking - please pass it this way. Between this statement, your almost assured stand that Kobe Bryant was going to jail and that Houston won't even make the playoffs - I gotta believe you should change yourname to Amsterdamman13.

that being said - I do think Anthony has become much more of a jackass than I thought he was before the Olympics.

cheese like everyone else in this country you are welcome to your opion. we can all rate player by our own standards.

personally i hate players like AI (i think that ai is the prefect example of what is wrong with the nba today. guns, drugs, homies, pads, and of course being the only person on your team) and melo is falling into this same type of player. these are players who feel that we should be thankful that we are allowed to even see them play. i wouldnt have players like AI and rasheed wallace if i had the power to make the call.

as for kobe may or may not have raped the girl, but because of the leaks and only getting to hear from the defense in the case we will never know how strong the case may have been. what we do know is that they had sex and she had marks on her neck that matches kobes hand prints, and injuries to her private areas that are consitant to rape. after that we dont know anything because the defense in the case was flooding the news with so much bullsh!t we may never know (wait till the civil case).

only 6% of rape cases come back with a conviction and less then 10% of rapes are reported in the first place. to me this sounds like a crime of epic scale is going on in front of a faces and we are doing nothing to change it.

as far as houston goes i believe this this team is not going to go anywhere because of age and injuries. you can take what i say or not just like you, i am allowed to have an opion. so get over it.

 

[scotsman13]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3298669/

msn has given melo the whine of the week.


Adrees Latif / Reuters file
Carmelo Anthony
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We have little tolerance for someone who does nothing for a winning team and then complains that he wasn’t used properly — or at all. Such people live by the motto: “There’s no ‘we’ in team, but, if you toss out two letters and rearrange the others, there is a ‘me.’”

Even worse than such self-absorbed knuckleheads are the athletes who do nothing for a losing team and then whine about not being used. By their behavior, they are saying the team’s loss means nothing, and their personal loss means everything. Instead of crying that they didn’t have a hand in a victory, they are wailing about not being able to contribute to defeat.

These people thrive on teams like the L.A. Clippers, Arizona Cardinals and the New York Rangers. They’re the guys whose first act upon entering the locker room after a game is to grab a stat sheet to find out if they got as much action as their wonderful talent deserves. They’re the ones who never look at where their team is in the standings but know exactly where they stand among the league leaders.

Such a crybaby is Carmelo Anthony, our choice for Whiner of the Week. And if we were a Denver Nuggets fan, we’d be concerned about the mental make-up of a man who last year refused to re-enter a game after being pulled from it and now seems determined to prove that episode wasn’t the aberration we all thought it was.

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Anthony was on the U.S. Olympic Team that came home from Athens chanting, “We’re number three!” But, he now whimpers, he wasn’t part of the team.

Why was that?

Because that mean, nasty coach, Larry Brown, put Melo’s uncooperative butt on the bench and pretty much kept it there for most of the tournament. After playing little in an opening 19-point loss to that powerhouse from Puerto Rico, Anthony decided the Olympics weren’t for him.

He didn’t hang with the team, didn’t check out the 2,500-year-old wonders of ancient Athens, didn’t wander down to the sun-drenched beaches to clear his mind, and certainly didn’t decide to apply himself in practice to convince Brown that he could be a team player.

“I would play my (video) games, and hope and pray that it would be over with,” he told The Denver Post. “I was in my little funk. I didn’t want to be involved with nobody.”

From that, some got to feeling that perhaps Anthony hadn’t caught the true team spirit. “People were looking at me like I was selfish and I was only thinking about myself,” he sniffed.

Hard to figure out where anyone would get such an idea.

“I’m not saying I’m the greatest player in the world,” he continued, breaking open his third box of tissues. “But I’ve never sat on nobody’s bench.”

Just keep it up, kid, and you’ll be sitting on everybody’s bench.

 

[SweetD]

Arizona Cardinals

What the F* I can't remember any player on the Cards complaining about not getting playing time... Why must the media do this.

 

[Joe Mama]

Everybody keeps complaining about the NBA players staying on the Queen Mary. I had just assumed that their lodging on the boat had more to do with security than the amenities.

Joe Mama

 

[Southpaw]

I don't know that is true. I am sure the rest of the world had their players staying in the Olympic village. The other U S A athletes stayed in the Village. Maybe the Prima Donnas didn't want to mingle. I remeber years ago Barkley hung out in the village and had a great time. I really think these guys are just too full of themselves.

 

[thegrahamcrackr]

I don't know that is true. I am sure the rest of the world had their players staying in the Olympic village. The other U S A athletes stayed in the Village. Maybe the Prima Donnas didn't want to mingle. I remeber years ago Barkley hung out in the village and had a great time. I really think these guys are just too full of themselves.

There were a couple of players who said they would have rather stayed in the village. I remember Duncan did for sure.

There were already so many security risks invovled, so I agree with Joe. It was simply safer that way. The Olympic squad was hundreds of millions of guaranteed contract. No other country came close to brining that much (in contracts) for their ENTIRE representation.

 

[baltimorer]

"I remeber years ago Barkley hung out in the village and had a great time. I really think these guys are just too full of themselves."

There's a distinct difference between not wanting to be blown up by a terrorist and being "full of themselves." Do you not see it?

And for the record, it wasn't the players' choice to be on the Queen Mary II, it was the NBA as a whole. I guaruntee you that Jerry Colangelo didn't want to lose Amare Stoudemire and the millions of dollars he has invested in him to a suicide bomb going off at Olympic village. If anybody here would rather see Shawn Marion, Amare Stoudemire, or any other NBA player in what could easily be perceived as harm's way, just because you feel like they're flaunting their money if they aren't, then there's something wrong with you.

"I remeber years ago Barkley hung out in the village and had a great time."

Would I be wrong in assuming that you understand 9/11 was indeed after the summer of 1996?

 

[Southpaw]

In the U S, it always seems to come down to money. What a shame. The U S sends over 500 - 1000 athletes , but somehow the BB clowns are more important than everyone else. Another reason the pros should stay home.

 

[Southpaw]

Maybe they were just part of a promo package to help sell those " high roller " rooms on the ship. Never saw an NBA player do anything without a kickback or compensation.


"The 150,000-tonne ocean liner is part of an Olympic flotilla serving as floating hotels for around 10,000 people.

The Queen Mary 2 is the fifth cruise ship to arrive in Athens, Skalkos said. At least another three are expected to arrive before the Games start on Friday.

According to Games' organisers ATHOC, the Queen Mary 2 has a total 1310 cabins, with an average daily cabin price, excluding suites, of nearly 600 euros ($1031).

ATHOC had initially booked 30 per cent of ship's cabins for Olympic officials.

But on July 9, organisers turned over to the general public spare capacity on the ship left unbooked by Olympics officials at a cost of between 800 and 2350 euros per night.