Carmelo Anthony says he never called Jeremy Lin's $25M contract 'ridiculous'

Kristian Winfield, New York Daily News on Jun 13, 2026

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SAN ANTONIO — Carmelo Anthony and Jeremy Lin cleared the air in private. Then they recorded an episode of the 7PM in Brooklyn show, on which the former Knicks teammates treated listeners to a tell-all of what transpired during Lin’s final days in New York before leaving the Knicks for the Houston Rockets in the summer of 2012.

Most notably, Anthony said he never considered Lin’s contract extension “ridiculous,” only the Poison Pill portion that saw his teammate’s salary jump nearly 400% in value over the final year of the deal.

“I’ve never said this publicly: This was inside to someone who was about to make the decisions,” Anthony said on the episode that aired on Friday. “Ridiculous means, yes Houston offered him $25 million contract that New York could actually match. Did he deserve the match? Yes. That wasn’t ridiculous. What was ridiculous was the jump at that point in time was $4 [million], $4 [million] $15 or $16 million. So when you’re sitting across from the person who’s writing the check, they’re like, if I do this, this is what this means. You’re saying, yo that’s ridiculous. Why would you take that jump like that?”

Anthony said he immediately took the heat because those conversations escaped Madison Square Garden.

“Now s--- internally leaks and all of a sudden, Melo says Jeremy Lin’s contract is ridiculous,” he said. “No, what’s ridiculous is if you go back and do the math and the numbers at that point in time, what it did for the New York salary cap. Maybe as a player, I shouldn’t have been worried about that.”

Lin had a breakout sophomore NBA season in New York and averaged 14.6 points and 6.2 assists with many of his best games coming while Anthony was sidelined due to injury.

He said he never would have left New York if the Knicks offered him a smaller contract, but the offer never came.

“And so for me, it’s like I’m sitting there like, ‘I got to go back to New York. We got to find any which way.’ And New York, they could have offered me three years, nine million, but I didn’t even get that,” he said. “So I go to Houston, Houston gives me this offer and I’m like, I swear to you, I get on the phone with my agent and I’m like, ‘I don’t want to take it.’ He’s like, ‘You don’t have a choice.' ”

“You got to think from my perspective, everything kind of came and went so fast and now I’m not on the Knicks anymore. 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 so I’m like, ‘you got to think, Melo, I’m hearing this and I’m trying to piece together the story.' ”

Lin went on to play for six more NBA teams, including the Rockets, Los Angeles Lakers, Charlotte Hornets, Brooklyn Nets, Atlanta Hawks and Toronto Raptors. Anthony led the Knicks to 54 wins and the East’s No. 1 seed the following year.