Carmelo Anthony ‘Took a Huge Risk’ Not Having Shoulder Surgery

Despite a “messed up” left shoulder, Carmelo Anthony elected not to have surgery in the offseason. Melo now admits that it was an enormous risk not to go under the knife. Per Newsday: “Anthony revealed he had a torn labrum and torn rotator cuff. If he had opted for surgery, he said he would have missed four to five months and wouldn’t have been ready for the start of the season. Instead, he went with his ‘gut’ and decided to rehab and strengthen it without surgery. He said he feels great now physically and with his decision to forego surgery. ‘I’m ecstatic,’ Anthony said before the Knicks lost to the Celtics, 111-81, in Saturday night’s preseason game. ‘To go from having a torn rotator cuff, a torn labrum to not needing surgery or taking a risk and a chance of not getting surgery and letting it heal on its own, I took a huge risk in doing that. That just meant I had to put more time in the offseason to get that right.’ This doesn’t mean Anthony won’t aggravate the injury this season, but it could be one of the reasons Mike Woodson is sliding him back to his more natural small forward position and playing him with 7-foot power forward Andrea Bargnani. Anthony excelled at power forward last season, averaging a league-leading 28.7 points, but took a physical beating by playing bigger and stronger guys. Anthony hurt his shoulder April 14 against Indiana. He said he knew right then that something major had happened. ‘I was being a little naive,’ he said. ‘I had a feeling it was torn or something like that from when it first happened. Once it happened, I knew something was wrong with it. It was a labrum, rotator cuff. There was all type of stuff going on in there. It was messed up.'”