Brooklyn Nets guard Jeremy Lin is not Carmelo Anthony's favorite subject of discussion. Four years ago, when Lin signed an offer sheet with the Houston Rockets and the New York Knicks failed to match it, Anthony called the contract "ridiculous." Ever since, Anthony has been seen as a villain of sorts in Lin's story -- Amar'e Stoudemire hinted last season that Anthony did not exactly enjoy Linsanity, and former Knicks coach Mike D'Antoni confirmed the resentment when he appeared on The Vertical Podcast with Adrian Wojnarowski in July.
Asked about Lin becoming a marquee player for the Nets on Friday, Anthony "admitted he was surprised by that occurrence," according to the New York Post's Marc Berman.
"He is the face of their franchise -- believe it or not," Anthony said. "He came up, they paid him. Now the ball is in his hands. Now he's one of the franchise players over there. I don't know what you want me to say about that. I'm happy for him, excited for him to see how it's going to turn out over there."
Anthony did not want to comment his chemistry with Lin or the lack thereof.
"That was five, six years ago, bro," he said. "I forgot about that."
There's a lot to unpack here. First, it's not Anthony's job to breathlessly praise Lin or take responsibility for what the Knicks did in free agency four years ago. He has deflected questions about this ever since, and it's unlikely that he's going to change his tune now.
Second, let's chill on the "franchise player" stuff. The Nets lured Lin on a three-year, $36 million contract, which is far from max money. He is their starting point guard and most marketable player, but they are not expecting him to be a superstar. The "believe it or not" part of Anthony's quote makes the signing sound like a joke, and it's far from that -- Brooklyn wanted to change its culture and invest in the future, and coach Kenny Atkinson, who was on D'Antoni's staff in New York, thought that Lin could be a part of it.
The Nets will likely be terrible this season, and they probably won't have enough spacing for Lin to put up the kind of numbers he did with the Knicks. Still, the signing made sense, and he have a chance to run the team as their primary playmaker. In his first preseason game in Brooklyn, Lin scored 21 points on 7-for-11 shooting in 17 minutes on Thursday. He'll face his former team at Madison Square Garden on Saturday.
