Getty Carmelo Anthony plays against the Atlanta Hawks.
Carmelo Anthony should have his jersey retired by the New York Knicks according to Power 105’s The Breakfast Club’s DJ Envy.
“I think that Melo deserves to get his jersey retired,” DJ Envy told me on the Scoop B Radio Podcast.
“His jersey would never get retired.”
Born in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, NY, Anthony lived in the borough for part of his formative years.
He relocated to Baltimore, Maryland where he starred at nearby Towson Catholic before transferring to national basketball powerhouse Oak Hill Academy in Mouth of Wilson, VA.
Anthony’s move to NYC after winning a National Championship at Syracuse and playing seven years with the Denver Nuggets had the makings of a grand coming home party.
No such luck!
Always gracious in interviews, public appearances and even when he was off the clock, Anthony played it cool until the very end.
Anthony is one of the greatest scorers and purest small forwards to play the game.
As a Knick, Anthony broke Bernard King’s longstanding Knicks 61-point single game scoring record and Kobe Bryant’s 60-point mark for the most points ever scored at Madison Square Garden.
“I love Melo,” DJ Envy told Scoop B Radio.
“I think Melo being in New York, coming to the Knicks is bad. I think the management is bad and I think they really don’t know what they are doing. I don’t like how they pick players, I don’t like how they respect their players, but I am a Knicks fan and I always have been a Knicks fan.”
Carmelo Anthony has not played NBA basketball since November.
A 10-time NBA All-Star, Anthony signed with the Houston Rockets this summer after clearing waivers in a trade that shipped him from the Oklahoma City Thunder to the Atlanta Hawks.
The Rockets traded Anthony to the Chicago Bulls before the NBA’s trade deadline and was later waived.
Anthony has averaged 24 points, 6.5 rebounds and 3 assists in his career with the Thunder, New York Knicks, Denver Nuggets and Houston Rockets.
The third overall pick in the 2003 NBA Draft, the Los Angeles Lakers had been leaning toward signing Anthony for the rest of the season — until a mound of LA losses occured.
“I think Carmelo’s game still adapts to today’s game, it just has to be the right situation,” Sacramento Kings assistant coach Bobby Jackson told NBA writer, Landon Buford.
“With Carmelo’s situation being that he is 15 or 16 seasons in, will he be willing to take a back seat by coming off the bench and being a limited role player in that offense? I think that is the biggest question with Carmelo.”
In an interview with Taryn Finley of the Huffington Post recently, Melo suggested he is at peace with the fact he may not play much longer:
“I’m sure [retirement is] coming soon. I’d be sitting lying to you if I said it’s not coming soon. I think I want it to come soon. I don’t think I want to do this forever, but because you love it so much, it’s hard to give it up. At the end of the day, at anything you do, when it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go. But as long as you feel good with that.”
“He is one of the best 300 players in the world that’s not playing,” TNT’s Kenny Smith told me.
“You can’t say he’s not one of the best 300 players.”
“You don’t get better sitting out of basketball,” TNT’s Charles Barkley told me.
What about next season?
“It might be over,” said Barkley.
Yikes.
A long forward, Anthony is the epitome of today’s game, honestly. He can score.
“I don’t know if they remember how good of a player he was and still is,” Blake Griffin told Basketball Society Online.
“Sometimes it’s the situation. It sucks to see as a basketball player to see people act [as if] he is something [that] he is not.”
“I hope above all else that whatever it is, however he wants it to end, he gets to walk away and go down on his own terms,” Quentin Richardson, Anthony’s former Knicks teammate told me on the Scoop B Radio Podcast.
“He’s a great player,” New York Knicks captain, Lance Thomas told me in December.
“He’s a great teammate, most importantly he’s a great human being and he’s always been a great advocate for the NBA as a brand. So I just want him to get back on a team and play the sport he loves that’s paved a way for him and his family, and he just loves to play basketball, so I really want him back on a team.”