Carmelo Anthony: The "Melo" Legacy in the Hall of Fame and His "What Ifs"

Carmelo Anthony: A Legacy Forged on the Court and the History of Basketball

Hakim Warrick still remembers his first encounter with Carmelo Anthony, more than two decades ago, before a practice game at Syracuse University. In that summer of 2002, Warrick, with skepticism, wondered if this young man was really the player everyone was talking about. Soon, the court gave him the answer. Anthony, with a complete game and innate ability, proved his worth by scoring 27 points in his college debut against Memphis at Madison Square Garden. The only season of Anthony at Syracuse was an unprecedented success. He led the team, which began unranked, to a 30-5 record. He scored more points than any freshman in program history and became the first freshman in NCAA history to be named Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four. He led Syracuse to its first and only men’s basketball title in 2003.

He stands out. We’ve had great players, but Carmelo won. It’s simple. He was a great player and he won.
Jim Boeheim, Syracuse coach

Although he didn’t win championships in his 19 seasons in the NBA, Anthony will be recognized in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. Despite the obsession with rings in the sport, Anthony has built his reputation on his achievements and the path he forged to achieve them. He is number 10 on the NBA’s all-time scoring list with 28,289 points and third on USA Basketball’s all-time scoring list, with four Olympic medals, including three gold. He was a 10-time All-Star, a six-time All-NBA selection, and a member of the NBA’s 75th Anniversary Team. Anthony earned his reputation for what he did and didn’t do to try to win in the NBA.

Stephen A. Smith: Melo tendría 3 anillos si hubiera jugado con LeBron y Wade

Anthony’s NBA career is full of “what ifs.” After LeBron James was selected at number 1, the Detroit Pistons chose Darko Milicic at number 2, leaving Anthony available to the Denver Nuggets at number 3. What would have happened if Anthony had been selected by the Pistons?

I think if we had drafted Melo that year, we would have won at least three championships.
Chauncey Billups, coach of the Portland Trail Blazers

Years later, another crucial scenario arose: What would have happened if Anthony hadn’t signed a five-year extension with the Nuggets in 2006 and had waited for free agency with James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh?

It was supposed to be Bosh and Wade and then me and Bron going somewhere. We just couldn’t figure out where.
Carmelo Anthony

In 2008, Anthony joined James, Wade, Bosh and Kobe Bryant at the Beijing Olympics. There, he reunited with Boeheim, who was assistant coach to Mike Krzyzewski. “Carmelo, from day one, was going to score and the Olympic 3-point line is even shorter, so it was even easier,” said Boeheim. Jason Kidd, starting point guard for the 2008 United States team, highlighted Anthony’s importance to the team’s chemistry, smoothing tensions between Bryant and James. In the gold medal victory over Spain, he scored 13 points in 17 minutes off the bench, helping the “Redeem Team” complete its mission. Three years later, his famous stage in New York began. He played seven and a half seasons there. Although the Knicks did not win a championship, the Garden vibrated again. Anthony became a star, with his number 7 jersey being the best-selling in the league in 2013 and his reputation as a scorer consolidated. Gasol, for his part, reflects on another hypothetical scenario: What would have happened if Anthony hadn’t suffered a stress fracture in his foot in November 2019, which led the Portland Trail Blazers to release him? That injury gave him the opportunity to return to the league, adding 2,738 points to his career total in his final years. He retired four years ago and still has the most field goals to take the lead in the last five seconds of the last quarter or overtime (18) since the game was tracked play by play for the first time in 1996-97. His Olympic curriculum accumulated two more gold medals in London and Rio and still holds the US scoring record for points in a single game in an Olympiad, scoring 37 points in just 14 minutes and 29 seconds against Nigeria in 2012. “I wasn’t afraid of the moment. I wanted the ball. I think everyone knew that when I had the ball, I was going to shoot, not pass,” Kidd said. The Syracuse championship of Anthony still resonates, with the team celebrating its 20th anniversary in March 2023. And when Syracuse players evaluate freshmen for the first practice games of the summer semester, the games are no longer played at Manley Field House. They play at the Carmelo K. Anthony Basketball Center, the 54,000-square-foot practice facility inaugurated in 2009 thanks to the “little chubby guy”.