Carmelo Anthony Puts Knicks On Notice Ahead Of His Thunder Debut

Carmelo Anthony will make his Oklahoma City Thunder debut tonight as OKC hosts Melo's former team, the New York Knicks. Tonight's game will air on TNT at 8:00pm ET, and tip off can't come soon enough 33-year old forward.

Ahead of tonight's much anticipated matchup against the Knicks, Carmelo took to twitter with a simple message, "You watch me walk through hell, now watch me walk up out it."

According to Sportsline.com, the Thunder are 12.5 point favorite over the Knicks tonight, but after Melo's tweet about walking out of the hell that is the Knicks' franchise, don't be surprised if that number doubles, or triples. 

In a recent interview with Marc Stein, Carmelo spoke about his final season with the Knicks and how he had "no support from the organization." Carmelo told Stein that Phil Jackson, who is no longer with the team, was willing to trade for a bag of chips.

Needless to say, Carmelo is ready to bust the Knicks' collective asses tonight.

Via The New York Times' Marc Stein,

"There was no support from the organization," he said. "When you feel like you're on your own and then on top of that you feel like you're being pushed out ..."

His voice trailed off, but his implication was clear. Anthony's long-held determination to outlast Jackson in New York had eroded, and even after Jackson's departure from the Knicks in late June he no longer wanted to stick around.

"I think at that point it was too far gone," Anthony said. "I already had in my mind that I wanted to win, that I wanted to move on. We didn't think it would take as long as it did, but my mind was already made up."

The delay to find a workable trade, in Anthony's view, stemmed from the fact that Jackson was willing "to trade me for a bag of chips," while Scott Perry, who became the Knicks' new general manager after Jackson's departure, took a harder line in trade talks with Houston and Cleveland that eventually fizzled.

"They went from asking for peanuts to asking for steak," Anthony said with a laugh.