Carmelo Anthony's career-long start streak appears set to come to an end as early as Game 1 of the 2018-19 season.
Houston Rockets head coach Mike D'Antoni is "strongly leaning toward" inserting former Sixth Man of the Year Eric Gordon into the starting lineup this season and moving Anthony to a reserve role, sources indicated to ESPN's Tim MacMahon.
That would give the Rockets a likely starting lineup of Gordon, Chris Paul, James Harden, P.J. Tucker, and Clint Capela. D'Antoni's intention is reportedly to pair Anthony with defensive-minded forward James Ennis, presumably to help mitigate some of Anthony's deficiencies on defense.
Anthony has never come off the bench during his distinguished career, starting all of the 1,054 regular-season games and 72 playoff outings in which he's appeared.
Remaining in the starting lineup was a topic of contention throughout his lone campaign with the Oklahoma City Thunder last year. With the Rockets, Anthony finally relented on the possibility of moving into a bench role, telling MacMahon earlier this week: "Whatever I have to do to help this team win a championship, that's what's going to be done."
