Carmelo Anthony played just 16 minutes for the Los Angeles Lakers in the loss against the Phoenix Suns after being ejected. During the time on the court, the 37-year-old veteran scored 7 points and grabbed 4 rebounds.

Ahead of the game against the San Antonio Spurs, he talked about his physicality as well as about the ejection. “Like you said, I’ve always been a very physical player offensively, defensively,” Anthony said. “That’s just what I know how to do, how I learned how to play the game. I’ve been able to utilize it to my advantage.

“Here is different, being able to utilize that physicality and other ways of the game, other aspects whether it’s for yourself, whether it’s for somebody else. I think that’s part of the adaptation for me on this team and having a different role and not being aggressive to get something from myself but being aggressive to get something from somebody else. That’s just me being able to adapt and playing a role that this team needs.

“As far as the ejection, it happened, I don’t really know what to say to that. I know how important my presence is out there on the court. Was I trying to control it at that point? No, I wasn’t trying to control at that point. It was hard for me to control at that point. So many things had led up to that point so it wasn’t just about that, so many things had led up to that point.

“But again this is no excuses, it happened. I take it on the chin. The only think I feel like I let the guys, let my team down just being ejected. That’s not something that I do, get ejected and put my team in situations like that. But it happens man, it happens.

“Maybe we need that type of fire, somebody to spaz out or somebody hard foul. We need that type of energy. I miss that game, I missed a game where you could hard foul and pick somebody up and say ‘Okay, I took the foul’ or the dialogue between myself and the ref. Some refs allow you to have that dialogue and some not so you just got to be cautious of that. But to put my team in that situation that’s the only thing that I would take from that.”