Carmelo Anthony won everything there is to win in basketball except an NBA championship

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Carmelo Anthony joined an illustrious group of players on Monday when he officially announced his retirement from the NBA. On first glance, you might assume I’m talking about the club populated by legends like Charles Barkley, Steve Nash, Elgin Baylor and Karl Malone. That’s the infamous “best players without a ring” crew, and it’s a list Anthony certainly has a place on, but it isn’t the only group of Hall of Famers he officially joined upon his retirement. The second one paints a more accurate picture of his basketball career.

The NBA started sending players to the Olympics in 1992. Since then, only three players have won a gold medal and an NCAA championship… without having won an NBA title. Patrick Ewing created the club in 1992. Grant Hill joined in 1996. Carmelo Anthony completed the trio in 2008, and then again in 2012 and 2016. Players who don’t win rings are almost always defined by that single failure, but it’s usually a woefully incomplete accounting of that player’s body of work. The “everything except an NBA championship” club has a slightly better ring to it, doesn’t it?

Anthony has won at every level of basketball. He finished his high school career with a 32-1 season at the famed basketball program at Oak Hill. That season opened with a 25-game winning streak, included multiple tournament victories, and even boasted perhaps the most famous prep basketball game ever played: a 72-66 road win in Akron, Ohio over St. Vincent’s St. Mary’s, which was led by Anthony’s contemporary LeBron James. The two combined for 70 points in the duel, which was televised on ESPN and more than lived up to the hype. Anthony, who wasn’t on the team at the time, helped avenge a 65-45 drubbing James engineered over Oak Hill the year prior.

He moved on to Syracuse after high school, where he led the most successful season in program history. Coach Jim Boeheim had reached the national championship game twice, but lost on both occasions. Anthony changed that in his lone season in upstate New York. In the process he led the NCAA tournament in scoring…

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Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/carmelo-anthony-won-everything-there-is-to-win-in-basketball-except-an-nba-championship/

Author : Sam Quinn

Publish date : 2023-05-22 18:50:31

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