Ryan Anderson is Making the Rockets Glad They Didn’t Trade Him

Wrote about Ryan Anderson, who was dragged through the mud all summer and has just picked up right where he left off. An excerpt:

His contract reportedly became a stumbling block to a Melo deal because the Knicks didn’t want it, and neither did anybody else. It soon became something like a consensus that Anderson — who, again, was coming off a terrific season, had one of the worst contracts in the NBA. So bad was the contract that teams supposedly wanted two first-round picks just to take him off Houston’s hands in a three-team deal that landed Melo with the Rockets.

But a trade never materialized. Melo decamped to Oklahoma City instead. Anderson stayed with Houston, and he’s picked up right where he left off. How? Well, it helps that he never felt like a deal was actually as close as it was made out to be. He has good relationships with Morey and D’Antoni, and he says they talked a lot throughout the summer — both in Las Vegas and when the team got together for workouts in the Bahamas. “In no way did they lead me to believe that that was actually accurate — what was in the news,” Anderson says. “It was a completely Carmelo Anthony-run show.”

Read the full story at VICE Sports.