All-Star center Joakim Noah drew flak after reports indicated that he tried to convince New York Knicks superstar Carmelo Anthony to leave the Big Apple and sign with the Chicago Bulls this summer.
But while tampering talks are centered on Noah at this point, it appears that the hard-working center was not the only player to allegedly talk with Anthony about his impending free agency.
CSN Chicago reported that Minnesota Timberwolves superstar Kevin Love also had a discussion with Anthony during the 2014 All-Star Weekend in New Orleans.
Sources did not indicate what kind of talk transpired between Love and Anthony, but NBA insiders are convinced that it was also about Anthony's future in New York.
Previous reports indicated that the Knicks are planning to make a strong push to sign Love in the summer of 2015, and the Timberwolves star will only consider signing with the Knicks if Anthony stays with the team beyond this season.
"Noah did discuss the prospect of Anthony relocating from New York to Chicago, but a league source said that Anthony subsequently had a conversation with Timberwolves All-Star power forward Kevin Love, a oft-rumored Knicks free-agency target in 2015," CSN Chicago reported.
In the same report, sources close to the situation confirmed that Noah indeed talked to Anthony about playing for the Bulls, but the 29-year-old center labeled the reports about his alleged pitch as plain "gossips."
"I feel a lot of gossip," Noah said. "I think we all know that we're in a good place, our team is in a good place. We've got a healthy group, it's a healthy environment, and we're not going to let gossip get in the way of what we're doing. We've gone through so much this year, so it's not going to be a little gossip that gets out there."
The Knicks are expected to ask the NBA to investigate Noah for tampering, but Bulls head coach Tim Thibodeau insisted that there is nothing to investigate because all talks about the incident are nonsense.
"It's a bunch of nonsense. People just start throwing stuff out there and they wait for everybody to respond to it," Thibodeau said in an interview.
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