Over the past quarter-century, the NBA game has largely transformed from a grimy, physical, elbows-and-in slugfest into a more streamlined, faster-paced and immaculately spaced factory for creating layups, 3-pointers and free throws. This shift has generated the most efficient and effective offenses the sport has ever seen. It has also generated no shortage of arguments about whether said sea change is, in and of itself, a good thing — about the scourge of stylistic homogeneity, about forsaking art for math, and about whether something might be lost in the relentless pursuit of increased efficiency. (Sports, as ever: a metaphor for life.)
Reasonable people can disagree on the relative merits of back-in-the-day ball and the post-Moreyball model. (Unreasonable people can, too. And they do. Most hours of the day and night. On pretty much every sports television, radio and podcast outlet.) You’d like to think, though, that even the most ardent adherent of the modern game can feel stirred by watching a heavyweight deliver knockouts in a phone booth; can find joy in watching a craftsman create something simple and effective with tools honed over countless hours; can see the beauty in pristine and refined footwork, timing and form translate into points.
Advertisement
Man, it was fun to watch Carmelo Anthony cook.
Anthony often occupies a central space in those old-school-vs.-new-school debates: a player who rose to international superstardom as a young man by mass-producing buckets in the midrange, and who in his mid-30s found himself on the outskirts of a league that had migrated to the perimeter without him. Come this summer, though, he’ll occupy a different space: the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
There will be people who arch an eyebrow at Melo’s enshrinement, pointing to a résumé that not only lacks an NBA championship, but that featured just one trip beyond the second round of the playoffs in 19 seasons — when he teamed with Chauncey Billups to push the Denver Nuggets to the 2009 Western Conference finals, where they ran aground against Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol and the eventual champion Los Angeles Lakers in six games. Combine that lack of postseason success with a dearth of top-shelf individual accolades — just one top-five finish in MVP balloting (the year he got the only first-place vote that 2003 draft classmate and lifelong friend LeBron James didn’t), no All-NBA First Team selections — and you’ve got at least the start of an argument that Anthony’s exploits, while memorable, might not rise to the ranks of immortality.
Advertisement
We’d remind them, though, that this is the Basketball Hall of Fame, not just the NBA Hall of Fame. Anthony’s résumé also includes an NCAA national championship at Syracuse, when he was named the Most Outstanding Player of the 2003 Final Four after leading the Orangemen to their first national title to cap arguably the greatest season by a true freshman in college hoops history:
It also includes his three Olympic gold medals as a member of the U.S. men’s national basketball team — second most in Olympic men’s hoops history, behind only Kevin Durant — from which he stepped away in 2016 as one of the most decorated players the program has ever seen. He still holds the Team USA single-game scoring record, dropping 37 points on Nigeria in 14 minutes in London in 2012 — one of the most jaw-dropping displays of pure shot-making you’ll ever see:
We’d also caution them, though, against just breezing over Anthony’s professional achievements, because those were plenty estimable in their own right.
Drafted two picks after LeBron and right before Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade in 2003, Anthony entered the league a star and remained one for the next 20 years. He hit the ground running in Denver, instantly revitalizing a Nuggets franchise that went from a 17-win also-ran before his arrival to a playoff team immediately after adding the precocious 19-year-old with the megawatt smile. He averaged 20-plus points per game in each of his first 14 seasons, becoming a perennial All-Star selection and All-NBA candidate, leading the Nuggets to seven straight playoff berths and their first Western Conference finals appearance in nearly 25 years.
Advertisement
Later, he set about the more daunting and thankless project of revitalizing the Knicks, becoming the franchise’s biggest and brightest star since Patrick Ewing. There were plenty of ups and downs in his six and a half years at MSG, but Anthony did lead New York to its first 50-win season and playoff series win in 13 years, and also set a new franchise scoring record when he hung 62 points on the Charlotte Bobcats in January 2014:
Few players in NBA history have ever produced buckets as smoothly or as voluminously as Anthony, with the bulk of them coming out of that same familiar frame. Catch on the wing, pivot, turn to face. Triple threat. Jab. Jab. (And, sometimes, jab-jab-jab-jab-jab.) Then, quicker than you can blink, he’s already risen up to rain down, or blown past you to the baseline to finish through traffic, or turned to splash a picturesque fadeaway.
Whatever Anthony didn’t or couldn’t do, he could always do that: deliver buckets on buckets on buckets. When he hung ’em up in 2023, he closed his account with 28,289 points scored, 10th most in NBA history. The seven players ahead of him who are already retired — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Karl Malone, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, Dirk Nowitzki, Wilt Chamberlain, Shaquille O’Neal — are already in Springfield. The two who aren’t — James and Kevin Durant — will join them the second they’re eligible.
Advertisement
Anthony is one of 21 players in NBA history to score at least 20,000 points, grab 7,000 rebounds and dish 3,000 assists. Sixteen of the other 20 are already in. The four still active — James, Durant, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Russell Westbrook — will be, too.
He is one of 44 players ever to make at least 10 All-Star appearances. Thirty-seven of the other 43 are already in. The six still active — James, Durant, Stephen Curry, James Harden, Chris Paul and Anthony Davis — will be, too.
He is one of 54 players ever with at least six All-NBA selections. Every retired player with at least that many is in. Look toward advanced metrics, and he’s 76th all-time in win shares and 77th all-time in value over replacement player. There are some close calls on those lists, but the lion’s share of Anthony’s peers on them are in or will be.
Advertisement
In 2022, Anthony was named to the NBA’s 75th Anniversary Team, created to honor what were — in the eyes of “a blue-ribbon panel of current and former NBA players, coaches, general managers and team and league executives, WNBA legends and sportswriters and broadcasters” — the 75 greatest players ever to suit up in the NBA. (As ever, your mileage may vary.) And — stop me if you’ve heard this one before — every retired player on that list is in.
Over the course of two decades in the NBA spotlight, Melo had some rocky moments. The “Stop Snitchin’” imbroglio and the Mardy Collins brawl. The beef with Nuggets head coach George Karl and the shutdown to force his way out of Denver and to New York. The clashes with Mike D’Antoni and the awkwardness over Jeremy Lin. The, um, alleged cereal-trash-talk-based extracurriculars with Kevin Garnett; the damned left hand of Roy Hibbert.
The protracted, exhausting, seemingly never-ending battle with Phil Jackson, which resulted in Anthony’s move from New York to Oklahoma City. That lone pretty rough year with OKC, which ended in another postseason disappointment and another exit, this time to Houston; 10 awful games with the Rockets, and one more departure — this time, looking like the end.
“It was this roller coaster of not knowing what comes next,” Anthony would later tell Chris Herring, then of Sports Illustrated. “Ups and downs. Mentally, spiritually, emotionally. On and off the court.”
Advertisement
It wasn’t the end, though. That, in itself, was a triumph.
After more than a year out of the sport, Anthony signed with the Portland Trail Blazers and played, more or less, like Carmelo Anthony — or, rather, like the version of Carmelo Anthony the league needed him to be. He assented to playing a complementary role next to Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum, spacing the floor as a power forward and averaging 15.4 points and 6.3 rebounds per game while shooting 38.5% from 3-point range.
Anthony performed well enough on his prove-it deal in Portland to earn another contract, finally agreeing to come off the bench and shooting a career-high 40.9% from deep as a contributor for a playoff team, finishing seventh in Sixth Man of the Year voting. That got him one last year, riding with draftmate and longtime pal LeBron and Co. on the Lakers — a Hollywood ending of sorts for someone who’d pulled off the toughest trick there is for a superstar: recognizing that the world had turned and left him somewhere else, and finding himself along the way.
Advertisement
“You go for 16, 17 years and you’re the guy on the team and you’re the star, and then all of a sudden somebody is like, ‘Listen, come off the bench,’” Anthony told reporters when he joined the Lakers. “I had to swallow that ego. I had to swallow that pride. But I also had to use that ego and that pride to keep me on edge and keep me motivated. And I’ve accepted that.”
Stories aren’t just about their opening pages or the peak of the action; the denouement and the ending matter, too. And while Carmelo’s didn’t culminate in a title-celebrating victory parade to send him off into the sunset, it did finish with his love of the game rediscovered and intact; with him getting to say goodbye on his own terms; with him having found an appreciation for all that he’d put into it, and all that he’d gotten out of it.
“I’m at peace. That doesn’t bother me no more; that idea that you’re a loser if you don’t win a championship,” Anthony told Herring. “For me, I’ve won. I won back in 2003, the night I shook David Stern’s hand on that [draft] stage. I made it out of Red Hook. I’ve won at life.”
Out of Red Hook, out of Baltimore, and now: to Springfield. F*** outta here. He’s got it.
Read the full article here
