Throughout his sabbatical from the league, Anthony was outspoken in his belief he could still play. But he acknowledges there was a point he thought about retirement after so many teams passed on his services. “I was ready to walk away, yeah,” Anthony said. “It was hard. But there came a point when I was, like, ‘You know what? I’ve given a lot to this game. I played 15, 16 years in this game. I’m ready to give it up, because I just knew that, at that point in time from a basketball standpoint, that narrative that it — it was already out there. So I’d been fightin’ an uphill battle anyway if I didn’t go to the right situation.”