New York Knicks: Has Carmelo Anthony Already Sealed His Legacy?


“I was born on May 29, 1984 in Brooklyn, NY. They started calling me ‘Little New York’ and ‘New York This’ or ‘New York That.’ In New York, there’s a basketball court at every corner. Basketball is all we really knew. I wanted to be Bernard King.” — Carmelo Anthony.

Since entering the league in 2003, Anthony has certainly made Bernard King — and every other player he looked up to as a kid — proud as he’s become one of the NBA’s biggest stars and the greatest international player in basketball history. With nine All-Star games and six All-NBA teams to his name, Anthony has not only justified being the third pick overall 13 years ago but continues to make the Detroit Pistons regret taking Darko Milicic.

After entering the association and immediately becoming a member of the “’03 three’ with Ohio’s LeBron James and Marquette’s Dwyane Wade, the past few seasons have been rough for Syracuse’s Carmelo Anthony, however. Between a bitter divorce with the Denver Nuggets and a series of bad personnel decisions by the New York Knicks, Anthony has only made the postseason three times since the start of the 2010-11 season. Factor in James’ three titles since the 2011-12 season and the emergence of stars like James Harden, Stephen Curry, Kawhi Leonard, and others have rendered Anthony a forgotten man by many in the NBA. Anthony’s seemingly even fallen out of that ’03 group, having been replaced by the third member of Miami’s big three in Georgia Tech’s Chris Bosh.

Not that Carmelo Anthony has been mediocre since arriving in New York, of course. Since his first full season with the Knicks in 2011-12, Anthony has still been averaging 25.1 points on 44 percent of his shots with 7.2 rebounds and 3.3 assists a night and has played in 82 percent of games in every season but 2014-15. On most teams, those numbers are good enough to engineer a postseason run, but not on the Knicks, where the curse of Isiah Thomas still haunts the organization nearly a decade after his departure. Even with the addition of Latvian rookie Kristaps Porzingis last year, the Knicks still missed the playoffs and even fired second-year head coach Derek Fisher after the legendary Laker won just 40 games in 136 tries.

Now, with what many would argue to be the best roster that Carmelo Anthony has had since he played in Denver, the time is now for the Knicks to make their first playoff appearance since the New Orleans Pelicans were still named the Pelicans. Despite putting an entire franchise on his back since Amar’e Stoudemire’s career-altering injury in the 2012 postseason, it’s like the star that shined so bright for Carmelo Anthony has begun to collapse in on itself. All that remains from the last Knicks team to play more than 82 games in a season is Anthony, with several of the vital pieces from that year — including point guard Jason Kidd — long gone and retired, leaving people to forget about the nine-time All-Star.

Almost six years since the New York Knicks mortgaged their entire future to bring the prodigal son home — this is the season that could potentially determine the legacy of one Carmelo Anthony, or so people think. Really, the truth is that Carmelo Anthony, after nearly a decade and a half in the league, has already sealed his place in NBA history.

Carmelo Anthony Team USA 2016 Olympics
[Image by Charlie Neibergall/AP Images]

Luckily for the Knicks, Carmelo Anthony has made it clear that his focus for the time being is fully on New York Knicks basketball. Following Team USA’s gold medal victory in last month’s Olympics, the former Syracuse star called it quits on one of the greatest international basketball careers in history (via USA Today):

“We fought. It wasn’t always pretty. We came together July 17, and we all committed for this reason. It was a special moment for me. I know this is the end. This is it for me. I committed to something… I committed to this in ’04. I’ve seen the worst and I’ve seen the best. I stuck with it, we stuck with it. I’m here today, three gold medals later. I’m excited for me, but also for the other guys who have never experienced anything like this…. I just want to say thank you for allowing me to be one of the leaders, not just of our team but of the country. Despite everything that’s going on right now in our country, we got to be united. I’m glad I did what I did, I stepped up the challenge but this is what it’s about. Representing our country on the biggest stage you can be on. America will be great again, I believe that. We got a lot of work to do but one step at a time. I’m glad we represented it in the fashion that we did.”

I’m not going to dance around this upcoming fact the way that other basketball fans seem to be: the Atlantic Division is tough, much tougher than most people are calling it. Barring a major injury, the Celtics are probably the biggest threat to come out of the Eastern Conference besides the Cavaliers, the Raptors kept most of their core around, years of tanking have paid off for the 76ers and their improved roster, and even the Nets could surprise some people (though they’re far from a playoff spot). It’s easy to joke about how the Eastern Conference is mediocre as a whole compared to the West, but it’d be impossible to look someone in the eyes and say with a straight face, “the Atlantic Division is a joke and the Knicks are going to easily win it.”

But, the Knicks winning the Atlantic Division isn’t going to do much for Carmelo Anthony’s legacy; the debate between him and LeBron James died years ago, probably around the time LeBron won his first title with the Miami Heat. By that time, James had already made it to three NBA Finals while Melo has — and remains — without a single appearance in the championship round. Once the Knicks’ current playoff drought began in the 2013-14 season, it’d already been well-established that James was a superior player to Anthony and was already a candidate for the top five NBA players of all time. Anthony, on the other hand, was just another big-name NBA player who could score but couldn’t lead his team to a championship appearance.

When it comes to discussing legacy, though, it’s important to remember that this is an entirely different conversation than the greatest player of all-time. Is LeBron James going to finish as a better player than Carmelo Anthony when the two hang up their headbands in a few years? Without a doubt, but does LeBron being better than Carmelo Anthony affect either’s legacy? Well, no, not really.

Carmelo Anthony LeBron James
[Image by Al Bello/Getty Images]

Legacy is simply how a player is going to be remembered and the impact they made on their sport both when they were active and after they retired. Players like LeBron, Micheal Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Magic Johnson, their legacy is that they were trendsetters, game-changers who inspired millions around the world en route to making a case for becoming the greatest of all-time. Carmelo Anthony’s legacy is a bit more complicated because of instead on focusing mainly on his NBA stats, we as fans and journalists are also going to be taking his international play into account.

When you have three gold medals, the all-time scoring record for international play, and the most Olympic games among Team USA players, you are the greatest in that category. That, even if it’s not going in the regular season NBA record book, helps pave a legacy! In the way that Yao Ming was inducted into the Hall of Fame earlier this month because of his worldwide impact on the game of basketball, Anthony is going to wind up in the Hall of Fame because of his play both in America and in international play.

Anthony has also made a legacy for himself by not being afraid to speak out on how he feels during a time of PC culture and censorship. It wasn’t long ago that Anthony, who once warned people about snitching to the police, said the following about the Freddie Gray verdict in Baltimore.

“It’s just sad. The people there, the communities there, all they want is justice. Everybody is expecting something to come out of this. It’s just getting worse and worse. I don’t think anyone has the answers. I said it before, the system is broken. It takes a lot to fix it … The Freddie Gray situation is right in my backyard. These are my people, people that I grew up with. It’s affecting me. I want everybody there having voices. It’s about creating a plan and executing a plan and not just speaking out on this and speaking out on that. At the end of the day, talking is not going to do that anymore. We got to have action, no matter what that action is, we got to have action.”

Carmelo didn’t have to be the player that James has been or what Dwyane Wade was in his prime to carve his own legacy, which people don’t understand because they confuse legacy with being an all-time great. Vince Carter certainly isn’t an all-time great when compared to a James or a Kobe Bryant, but his legacy as perhaps the greatest dunker of all-time is why he’s going to get Hall of Fame votes when he eventually retires. If Carmelo Anthony called a press conference to retire tomorrow, he would be a first-ballot inductee into the Hall of Fame without a doubt.

Twenty years from now when our children are taking to the internet to debate the best player of the ‘LeBron James Era’, the chances are that Carmelo Anthony is going to be forgotten if he doesn’t win a ring or an MVP award. But, by becoming one of the best pure scoring talents and the greatest international player in basketball history, Carmelo Anthony has made a legacy for himself that is enough for a Hall of Fame without a ring.

Having a basketball corner on every corner certainly helped Little New York, that’s for sure.

[Featured Image by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images]

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