Jeremy Lin and Carmelo Anthony revisit Linsanity fallout

For more than a decade, former NBA superstar Jeremy Lin carried unanswered questions about the rise and fall of Linsanity without publicly blaming the teammate many fans believed stood in his way.

During a long-awaited conversation with Carmelo Anthony on the “7PM in Brooklyn” podcast, Lin revealed that his departure from New York “crushed” him and contributed to years of emotional struggle. Yet despite the hurt, the 37-year-old basketball legend said he refused to publicly discuss the situation until he had the chance to address it directly with Anthony.

Lin said he struggled to reconcile comments made after his departure from New York. Former teammates and coaches publicly described jealousy and locker-room tension, centering around then-superstar Anthony, during Linsanity.

“Everything kind of came and went so fast, and now I’m not on the Knicks anymore,” Lin said. “And after that, I hear publicly a coach saying something and three teammates saying stuff publicly about like, ‘Oh, Linsanity didn’t vibe with everybody in the locker room,’ and ‘Linsanity this,’ and ‘There was jealousy,’ or ‘It just couldn’t work, we couldn’t figure it out with that group.'”

After Lin signed a three-year, $25-million offer sheet with the Houston Rockets in 2012, Anthony — who signed a five-year, $124-million contract with the Knicks in 2014 — publicly called it a “ridiculous contract.” According to Lin, that remark was one of several things he was trying to make sense of.

“I didn’t know how you actually felt about me,” Lin told Anthony. “I’m hearing and piecing all these things together, and I’m like, OK, he probably had a hand. I don’t know how big of a hand, but he probably had a hand in me not coming back to the Knicks.”

Anthony said his criticism, which he says he only expressed to an insider who was “about to make the decisions,” was directed at the structure of the contract, not Lin. “What was ridiculous was the jump at that point in time from like four to 15 or 16 million or something like that,” he explained. “So when you’re sitting across from the person who is about to write the check, and they’re like, ‘If I do this, this is what this means, blah blah blah blah blah,’ yo, that’s ridiculous. Why would you take that jump like that?”

Lin said his departure from New York was a chapter that affected him far more deeply than many people realized. “My exit from the New York Knicks crushed me,” Lin said. “I was messed up not just because I wasn’t going back to New York, but because of how it happened.”

He added that he tried to find ways to remain with the Knicks after receiving Houston’s offer sheet. “I got on the phone with my agent and I’m like, ‘I don’t want to take it,'” he recalled. “He’s like, ‘You don’t have a choice. There’s no other offer from the other 29 teams. Do you want to be in the NBA or not?'”

He said he even suggested alternatives. “Tell the Knicks I’ll go back and play for the qualifying offer. I’ll take three years, nine, or whatever. I don’t care. I want to stay.” Despite becoming the face of one of the NBA’s biggest stories, Lin said his mindset never changed. “I’m not thinking about all these other things that everybody’s thinking about. It’s like I’m literally just trying to make it.”

The years after Linsanity included therapy and self-reflection as Lin worked through experiences that stretched beyond basketball. “I went to therapy around this,” he said. “I had a sports psychologist around this because there was trauma from early in my career that I wasn’t able, I didn’t know how to get past.”

Even with that hurt, Lin said he never felt comfortable discussing Anthony publicly before speaking with him privately. “I’ve actually never spoken publicly about my exit from New York until today,” he said. “I don’t think it does a service to talk about it publicly without first talking it out privately.”

Near the end of the conversation, Lin explained why reconciliation mattered more to him than assigning blame. “I have been praying for you for years, praying for you and praying for everything, and praying for us to be able to have this,” he told Anthony. “I want my story to be my story, not, ‘Hey, this is Jeremy’s story, and by the way, let’s talk bad about somebody else or blame somebody.'”

Many of the video’s most-liked comments argued that Anthony’s explanations reinforced long-held suspicions about his role during and after Linsanity.

“Melo was definitely jealous,” one commenter wrote in a post that received more than 1,600 likes. Another accused Anthony of “talking in circles,” while several others said they came away unconvinced by his explanation of the “ridiculous contract” remark. “Was waiting for Carmelo to apologize to Jeremy but never got that,” one viewer wrote.

Others pointed to Lin’s approach throughout the conversation. Several praised him for raising difficult questions directly while avoiding personal attacks, while others said the conversation reinforced the reputation for humility and restraint that has followed him throughout his career.

“Jeremy Lin has been consistently a really upstanding person. Good on him,” one viewer wrote. Another argued that Lin’s willingness to avoid public conflict may have come at a personal cost, writing, “Frankly, his demureness cost him his career tier.”