HAKIM WARRICK STILL remembers his initial glimpse of Carmelo Anthony before a pickup game at Syracuse University more than 20 years ago.
As the team took the court at the Orange’s old Manley Field House practice facility on that summer day back in 2002, Warrick was skeptical, to put it mildly.
“I’m looking at him and I’m like, ‘This little chubby dude is who everybody’s so hyped about?'” Warrick told ESPN.
The sophomore soon understood why. The talented forward out of Baltimore with the round features had an all-around game and quickly established himself with 27 points in his collegiate debut against Memphis at Madison Square Garden.
Anthony’s solo season at Syracuse was an unprecedented success, with the team starting unranked and finishing 30-5. 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 with 33 points and 14 rebounds in the semifinals over Texas, and 20 points, 10 rebounds and 7 assists in the championship over Kansas.
“He stands out,” Syracuse’s longtime coach, Jim Boeheim, told ESPN. “We’ve had great players. Going back to [Dave] Bing, who was an incredible player, but Pearl [Washington] and Sherman [Douglas] and Derrick [Coleman] and [Rony] Seikaly, Billy Owens, John Wallace. There’s been a lot. But Carmelo won it. It’s pretty simple. He was a great player and he won it.”
There would be no championships to follow in Anthony’s 19 seasons in the NBA, however. Yet as Anthony is inducted to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame this weekend, he has managed to avoid the ring-obsessed discourse that usually sets the standard for how players are judged in the sport.
Anthony’s overall accomplishments — and the path he forged to achieve them — makes him a no-brainer in Springfield. He’s No. 10 on the NBA’s all-time scoring list with 28,289 points. He is third on USA Basketball’s all-time scoring list, winning four Olympic medals — including three gold. He’s a 10-time All-Star, six-time All-NBA selection and a member of the 75th NBA Anniversary Team.
Rather than be defined by what he didn’t win, Anthony earned his reputation by what he didn’t do in order to try to win in the NBA.
1:01
Stephen A.: Melo would have 3 rings if he had teamed up with LeBron, Wade
Stephen A. Smith believes Carmelo Anthony would likely have won three NBA titles if he had linked up with LeBron James and Dwyane Wade on the Heat.
THERE ARE A series of what-ifs that accompany Anthony’s NBA career.
Starting with draft night.
After LeBron James went No. 1 to Cleveland, the Detroit Pistons selected Serbian big man Darko Milicic No. 2, leaving Anthony on the board for the Denver Nuggets at No. 3.
While Anthony had an impressive start in Denver, lifting the Nuggets from 17 wins to 43 and a playoff berth and finishing second in Rookie of the Year voting to James, Milicic barely got off the bench for a Pistons team that upset the Los Angeles Lakers to win it all.
It was Detroit’s lone title during a dominant stretch in which it reached six straight conference finals and back-to-back NBA Finals in 2004 and 2005.
What if it was Anthony in Detroit instead of Milicic?
“Of course I’ve thought about it,” former Pistons point guard and current Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups told ESPN. “I mean, I’ve done that for so long. For so long.
“And I really do believe that had we drafted Melo that year, we would’ve went on to win at least three championships.”
A few years later, as his scoring average climbed into the mid-20s and Anthony was recruited as a key cog in USA Basketball’s revamped national program, another major what-if scenario played out. This time, he had control over it.
What if he had never signed a five-year extension with the Nuggets in the summer of 2006 and lined up his free agency with fellow ’03 draftees and USAB phenoms James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh for 2010?
“It was supposed to be Bosh and Wade and then me and Bron going somewhere. We just couldn’t find out where,” Anthony said on “Podcast P” with Paul George in July 2024.
But in a decision he now explains was rooted in a mix of reluctance to risk any guaranteed money and a potential role that never seemed right, he stayed on his own island rather than hop on the Banana Boat.
“Imagine me at 23 years old, 24 years old, being the fourth option on the team when I’m leading my team every single year,” he told George. “Like, I’m finding my way in this league. And you want me to leave that and go be a fourth option? I don’t know how mentally I was going to do that.
“So I was like, ‘Hell, no. I can’t be that fourth.'”
In 2008, he joined James, Wade, Bosh — and Kobe Bryant — in Beijing for the Olympics.
He also reunited with Boeheim, who was an assistant on coach Mike Krzyzewski’s staff. And Olympic Melo was born.
“Carmelo, from Day 1, was going to score and the Olympic 3-point line is even shorter, so it was even easier,” Boeheim said.
“He could just come in, and I don’t even know how many times, but it seemed every time he came in, he made a shot. His first shot. He’d get a 3, he’d make it. Like, every time. He just was a natural Olympic scorer.”
Jason Kidd, Team USA’s starting point guard in 2008, said that Anthony was key to the team’s chemistry as well, smoothing the static between Bryant and James, who didn’t have a preexisting relationship.
“He was a grown-up,” Kidd told ESPN. “He knew how to keep everybody in the fold. … One of the biggest things about Melo, he is great on the court, but he’s great off the court. He’s a great teammate and I say that because it’s not just about basketball.”
In the gold medal win over Pau Gasol and Spain, he scored 13 points in 17 minutes off the bench, helping the Redeem Team — which is also being inducted into the Hall of Fame this weekend — complete its mission.
1:47
Flashback: Melo sets MSG record with 62 points
On Jan. 24, 2014, Carmelo Anthony scored 62 points to set Knicks and MSG single-game scoring records.
THREE YEARS LATER, Anthony’s famous tenure in New York began. He played 7½ seasons there. He lost to James, Wade, Bosh and the Heat in the first round in 2012 in five games (he scored 41 in the Knicks’ lone win). The following season he won the scoring title, averaging 28.7 points per game, and led New York to 54 wins and the No. 2 seed in the East before losing to the Indiana Pacers in the second round.
The Knicks didn’t break their championship drought, but The Garden — the arena where he started his Syracuse stint — became electric again. New York was back playing on the NBA’s tentpole TV calendar dates like opening night and Christmas Day, and Anthony’s patented 3-point celebration of poking three fingers to his temple was being mimicked around the league.
He was Melo in full, with his No. 7 Knicks jersey being the league’s bestseller in 2013 and his reputation as a scorer cemented.
“There’s something to be said for, ‘OK, I’m going to lead a group on my own,'” Gasol told ESPN. “He did do that. Obviously first in Denver and they had good teams, there were just better teams at the time. And same thing with New York — where it takes a certain level of ambition and confidence to be able to do that. ‘I’m going to go to the Knicks and I’m going to try to revive and put that franchise at the top again after years of struggle.'”
Added Boeheim: “The NBA is a lot about being on the team you’re at. He elevated Denver tremendously, but they’re playing Kobe and then they’re playing Tim Duncan. They’re not winning. They’re not winning a championship. And New York is not winning a championship with who was there. He elevated his teams. That’s what you can do in the NBA. He’s one of the really best three-dimension scorers that’s ever played. Shoot the 3, drive, pull-up. He had the whole game.”
1:37
Brian Windhorst: Carmelo is a first-ballot Hall of Famer
With Carmelo Anthony announcing his retirement, Vince Carter and Brian Windhorst reflect on his career.
THERE’S A FINAL hypothetical Gasol thinks about.
What if he had never suffered a second stress fracture in his left foot in November of 2019, leading the Portland Trail Blazers to waive him?
Without that injury, which ended his NBA career, would Anthony have ever been given a chance to extend his?
At the time, Anthony had been out of the league for more than a year after being unceremoniously dropped by the Houston Rockets just 10 games into the 2017-18 season. The Blazers filled Gasol’s roster spot with Anthony, who went from unemployed to averaging 15.4 points for Portland that season.
“So my injury gave him the opportunity to play again, prove himself,” Gasol said. Anthony added 2,738 points to his career total in his final flourish — two years with Portland and a final season in L.A., teaming up with James after all those years — a coda that allowed Anthony to crack the top 10 on the NBA’s all-time scoring list.
He retired four years ago and still has the most career go-ahead field goals in the final five seconds of the fourth quarter or overtime (18) since play-by-play was first tracked in 1996-97.
His Olympic résumé racked up two more gold medals in London and Rio and he still has the USA 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. “Otherworldly,” Boeheim said of Anthony’s 13-for-16 shooting performance (including 10-for-12 on 3-pointers). “It was crazy. Nuts.”
“He was not afraid of the moment,” Kidd said. “He wanted the ball. I think everyone knew when he had the ball he was shooting, not passing.”
His Syracuse championship still resonates too, with the team celebrating the 20th anniversary in March 2023 as Boeheim coached his final home game at the old Carrier Dome before retiring.
And when Syracuse players size up the incoming freshmen for the first pickup runs 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 opened in 2009 thanks to the “little chubby dude.”
“Everything happened how it was supposed to, I guess,” Billups said. “His career’s as good as it gets.”
