Carmelo Anthony has opened up about the difficult 15-month period he spent outside the NBA, admitting that he still does not fully understand why teams stopped offering him opportunities.

After his initial exit from the league, Anthony said the prolonged uncertainty caused him to question both his career and how he was viewed around the NBA.

“Imagine going through that as a player. Now you start questioning, like, ‘Damn. Was my career worth it? Did I really do what I was supposed to do in my career? Am I supposed to be here? Am I really nice? How are people looking at me?’”

Anthony described reaching an extremely low point as the months passed without another opportunity, while hearing different explanations publicly for why teams were staying away.

“I was down, down, down, down. I was back on the ground, hands up. Y’all got me. It’s a stickup. Take everything because of how it went down. Imagine me sitting there for 15 months like, ‘What the fuck is going on?’ Nobody got an answer for me. Everybody on TV making excuses. It’s this or it’s that. ‘He didn’t want to come off the bench.’”

Anthony tried to understand the situation himself but said he never found a convincing explanation. He recalled people suggesting that his reputation and presence as a superstar may have actually worked against him.

“I’mma be honest with you. As I studied it and did some knowledge on it, trying to get an understanding on it, I still can’t come up with nothing. It’s like, what was it? Some people came up to me like, ‘Melo, I’m going to be honest with you. Your aura was too much for out here. This couldn’t exist. Your aura couldn’t exist in here. Nobody was going to tell you that.’”

That explanation initially confused Anthony, particularly because he believed he had treated people around him respectfully and had not made significant demands.

“I said, ‘What the fuck does that mean?’ They said, ‘Everybody’s afraid to talk to you. Everybody’s afraid to say something to you.’ I said, ‘Why? I haven’t said nothing to nobody. I speak to everybody. I’m cordial. Why is everybody scared of me?’ Somebody said, ‘Well, you don’t need anything.’ I said, ‘What do you mean by that?’ He said, ‘Melo, you a superstar. You haven’t asked for one thing since you’ve been here.’”

Even after reflecting on the experience, Anthony said he remains uncertain about exactly what caused his extended absence. While he has his own suspicions about what happened, he stopped short of publicly detailing them.

“My point is, everybody had a thousand and one reasons of why it happened, and I still don’t know the reason why it happened. I have some inkling of why it happened or how it went down. I’m trying not to believe that’s what happened or how it went down, so I don’t want to speak on that.”