Carmelo Anthony delivered on his career, and for years, the internet was wrong about him.
Those are two pretty broad sentiments about what a star prospect’s potential should be while also generalizing online conversations that were hopefully more nuanced about Melo’s career. Anthony goes into the newest class of Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame enshrinements this weekend, and in every single way, he is a Hall of Famer, no matter what you think of his career or him as a player.
This isn’t one of those “Well, everybody gets into the Basketball Hall of Fame” situations. He’s not getting in because of that championship run at Syracuse or his play for the United States Olympic basketball squad either. Carmelo is a bona fide first-ballot Hall of Famer because of the NBA career he had. From my years of being on social media and my countless arguments about Melo, I believe people conflate “he didn’t live up to his potential” with “he didn’t deliver what I wanted to see from him as a talent.”
I’m flattered by all the love here today.
To clarify- Melo was an inexperienced + overrated player when I first coached him, Detlef is one of the best international + most efficient players ever and I’m the last one in Denver who still feels the Nuggets should honor Melo. 😆 pic.twitter.com/vuZRtSij1a
— George Karl (@CoachKarl22) February 16, 2024
I believe the crux of the anti-Melo sentiment is two-fold. On a lesser scale, his style of play wasn’t for everybody, and I can appreciate that. I don’t agree with it, but different shooting strokes for different folks, or whatever the saying is.
The second part of that anti-Melo sentiment likely came from him coming into the league in the same 2003 draft class as LeBron James, and the masses being promised the next generation of Magic Johnson versus Larry Bird. That absolutely did not happen and we never even came close to the epic playoff battles of those two in various NBA Finals appearances. They only had two playoff series against each other during Melo’s 19-year career with two quick first-round series. One happened in 2012 with Melo leading the New York Knicks and losing in five games to LeBron’s Miami Heat. The other was Melo as a role player in Portland in a quick bubble exit in 2020 to LeBron’s Los Angeles Lakers in five games.
There’s no denying that a new Magic-Bird dynamic never came close, although they always had fun individual matchups in the regular season when Anthony was in Denver. We can also fold how Carmelo exited small market Denver for the big market Knicks into something that added to an anti-Melo mentality. A lot of fans seemed to resent him for that and how it left the Nuggets star-less and the rush to the Knicks cost them some depth in the process.
Mostly, though, I think some people just don’t like a singular scorer. Not in the way Anthony would do it, at least. Anthony could and would flash more skills from time-to-time than just scoring, but on the court that’s where his bread was buttered. Recently, while hosting SiriusXM NBA Radio with Antonio Daniels, we spoke to Anthony’s former-Knicks teammate Raymond Felton about Melo going into the Hall of Fame. Felton marveled at his Hall of Fame teammate’s scoring IQ.
“I would put him on the level with someone like Kobe Bryant,” Felton said when asked about Anthony’s ability to put the ball in the basket. “I never played with Kobe but just the level of IQ of knowing how to score. I think Melo and Kobe are really up there as just two of the best that I played against.
“Just knowing how to score against different defenders, Melo is one of the best, if not the best.”
That’s incredible praise for Melo by putting him on the level of dissecting an opponent at the same level of Kobe. And Kobe’s game didn’t come without people criticizing his shot selection and approach. But when you discuss the manner in which they did it and talk to the peers of those all-time great scorers, you don’t get the same criticism. If anything, opponents of guys like Kobe and Melo will marvel at their approach to scoring.
Melo was a bully on the court. I wonder if many fans understand Melo’s level of physicality when it came to scoring his 28,289 career regular-season points. He slammed his shoulder or arms into the torso of his opponents to separate. As Felton described, you knew it was going to be “a cold tub, icing kind of night once the game was over,” if you were the assigned defender on him. While he didn’t fly up the court like a Dominique Wilkins, Melo became the 10th leading regular-season scorer in NBA history in more of a Mark Aguirre-style of physicality.
“His IQ to score — and I’m not talking about his IQ for the game, obviously it’s very high — but his IQ to score the basketball,” Felton answered about Anthony’s best scoring attribute. “Just understanding who’s guarding him. Understanding how they’re guarding him. Making adjustments within the game of ‘this guy is guarding me differently tonight’ or ‘this guy is guarding me this way.’ His IQ to score the ball is probably one of the highest I’ve ever seen.”
Anthony punished defenders. And he tricked them into losing their balance before he even put the ball on the ground or in the air. He might jab-step against an opponent four or five times before he did anything, just to see how comfortable they were in anticipating what might come next.
Daniels called it, “the best turn-and-face jab step I’ve ever seen.”
It was lethal and unsettling. Nobody just finds their way to 30,203 career points (regular season and postseason combined). Only 14 players in the history of the league have ever managed 30,000 points or more like that. All of them are Hall of Famers, except for LeBron, Kevin Durant and James Harden and that’s because those three are still playing.
Melo’s accolades are also impressive outside of the scoring. Ten All-Star selections. Six All-NBA selections (two Second Team and four Third Team). Named one of the top-75 players ever. The biggest thing missing from his career was postseason success. He had two appearances outside of the first-round in 13 playoffs with 10 of them coming with Melo as the star of the team.
Some of that might have been Melo’s fault. Some of that was the team construction. But it left people with an open avenue to diminish what his career has been. The trouble comes from understanding that even star players have roles, and Melo happened to be scoring a lot. Many people just wanted more from his game, but denying him as one of the greatest scorers in league history is ignoring those results in a way.
“Melo definitely has to be in my top five,” Felton answered when asked about Melo as an all-time scorer, “100 percent.”
Maybe that’s extreme. You have guys like Michael Jordan, Kobe, LeBron, Durant, Dirk Nowitzki and even someone like Harden who entered the league after Melo. That doesn’t even get into the big man conversation with Wilt Chamberlain, Shaquille O’Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon and many more. But that’s the thing about Carmelo; his peers knew what an issue it was trying to keep him from scoring all night in a multitude of ways.
Sometimes there can be an over-scrutinization of players for not being complete, and it’s rarely a standard held consistent with other Hall of Fame players. Allen Iverson and Wilkins and some of the other great scorers don’t seem to get the same treatment. They played in an era where people didn’t feel the need to overly scrutinize a guy for just being a scorer.
Melo isn’t above criticism. He wasn’t a complete player. He wasn’t a guy who won like some of his other contemporaries. But he was a guy opponents would use a whole game plan to take away his offense on a nightly basis. And on most nights, they couldn’t. He didn’t end up being the foil to LeBron’s path toward titles. He didn’t end up being a good defender or a guy racking up triple-doubles. He just scored and scored and scored. In a punishing fashion. At a Hall of Fame level.
Not everything or everybody has to be complete in order to be worthy of this honor. He earned his enshrinement and should be celebrated for having one of the great scoring skill sets we’ll ever see.
(Photo of Carmelo Anthony: Alex Slitz / Getty Images)