Carmelo Anthony’s Decline Reminds Me What a Bad Person I Am
On the Peril of Having Opinions about Athletes.
(Image via Yi-Chin Lee, Houston Chronicle / Photo by Nathan Graber-Lipperman)
Editor’s Note: This essay was originally published on Nov. 12, 2018. We have updated the story to reflect Melo’s current arc this season. To read the original version, click here.
Carmelo Anthony’s play in the bubble has been a revelation.
Not only did he pass John Havlicek and Paul Pierce for the 15th spot on the All-Time NBA scoring list, he’s been hitting catch-and-shoot threes at a 56% clip, providing a veteran presence and coming through in clutch moments. This supposed re-emergence of the former All-Star has even led to the creation of several Carmelo Anthony apology forms — turns out, we might have been wrong about Hoodie Melo after all.
We’ve come a long way. In November 2018, just under two years ago, a headline on ESPN.com informed me, “Carmelo, Rockets in talks over role, sources say.” Without elaborating much, the story did hit some ominous notes: the two sides were discussing how they “still might be able to proceed together for the rest of the season.” Also mentioned was the cost to the Houston Rockets ($2.4m) of buying out Anthony’s contract. Very ominous notes.
Clearly, things were not right in Houston. The same team that finished with a league-best 65–17 record the previous year stood 12th in the Western Conference at 4–7. Anthony was responsible for some of the decline, averaging an underwhelming 13.4 points on 40% shooting (33% from beyond the arc) — numbers that might be halfway serviceable if Antony was contributing Trevor Ariza-level defense.
But he’s not. He’s the anti-Ariza on that end of the court.
For Anthony-skeptics, this has been a long time coming. The same guy who a) refused to change his ball-stopping/jab-stepping style, b) remained congenitally uninterested in playing defense, and c) scoffed at the notion of coming off the bench in OKC (“Who, ME?!”) — this same guy might be nearing a forced retirement. Barring a massive reinvention — a change of scenery and approach, something like Matthew McConaughey in True Detective — we might be seeing the last of Carmelo Anthony. It seems like justice is finally catching up to him.
But wait…
Am I hearing myself? Who celebrates the decline of a once-great (though deeply-flawed) player? Answer: a bad person.
This is a trap that sports sometimes lays. Sports are so much fun to talk about, so involved and so engaging, that the positions we stake can come to define us. This is especially true in a prosperous, secular, and rather bored society in which sports often substitutes as nearly as anything can for the religions that were once central to our identities. We need our takes to be right, and we will argue them till the bitter end — even if that means revealing what a bad person we are for celebrating an athlete’s failures. Too much is on the line.
In that process, we invest such hopes and aspirations into young men we’ll never meet or know; they become something else entirely in our minds and hearts. And often these athletes, though they look like Homeric heroes, are really just teenagers, not far removed from childhood. Most NBA lottery picks are 19-year-olds, after all. Worse, we give these teenagers mass adulation and blank checks which all but the most remarkable human beings are bound to mishandle. I doubt I could have stayed humble had I received even a fraction of that hero-worship.
(Image via Akron Beacon Journal by Phil Masturzo)
Anthony, too, was predictably human. He made bad choices, overestimated his importance, and refused to see the fate that awaited him. One of the great lines from King Lear comes with the Fool chiding Lear: “Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.” Carmelo Antony, delusional and declining like Lear, became washed before he became wise. For that, he deserves pity. It has to be tremendously difficult to watch your powers dissipate, to hear choruses of punks like me trashing you on Twitter.
All the more pitiful because Anthony probably doesn’t understand it.
It could have been so different. Basketball historians have pitched the great what-if of Anthony’s career: What if the Detroit Pistons had not been blockheads? What if they had taken Anthony with the #2 pick in the 2003 NBA draft instead of Darko Milicic? Rather than playing for a franchise that indulged his worst habits, Anthony would have been tutored by Chauncey Billups and Rip Hamilton. These veterans would have required him to share the ball and to pick his moments. They sure as hell would not have let him laze on defense. They would have taught him how to be a professional.
But that didn’t happen. Anthony was instead defined by the crises of his own creation in New York, which detractors cannot forget. Halfway through the 2010–11 season, Anthony essentially forced the Knicks to trade for him, which required the sacrifice of half their roster. A savvier man would have signed with the Knicks as a free agent at the end of the season, thus preserving the young talent on the roster and insuring the franchise’s success for years to come. But that would have meant less money. And Anthony liked money. (The Knicks could offer more if they were re-signing Anthony, as opposed to signing him.) Then, playing for a visionary in Mike D’Antoni, Anthony refused to allow his coach’s vision to work. D’Antoni resigned forty-two games into the 2011–12 season. “I know he tried to implement a certain system. And everyone wasn’t buying into it, so he may have been a little frustrated and felt stepping down was the best way for him,” Knicks teammate Amare Stoudemire said at the time (“everyone” most likely being code for “Carmelo Anthony”).
But for a moment, D’Antoni-ball did work in New York. Unsurprisingly, Carmelo Anthony was not on the court at that moment. In case anyone has forgotten, the world-historical basketball moment known as Linsanity happened with Carmelo Anthony sidelined by an injury. The struggling Knicks won seven straight games behind the meteoric heroism of their fourth-string point guard.
It was not a big secret that Anthony got jealous of Lin because of how instantly Knicks fans fell in love with him. Again, it is Stoudamire who spoke about Anthony — using his favorite codeword, of course:
“Everyone wasn’t a fan of [Lin] being the new star. So he didn’t stay long. But Jeremy was a great, great guy. Great teammate. He worked hard. He put the work in and we’re proud of him to have his moment … You got to enjoy that. You got to let that player enjoy himself and cherish those moments. He was becoming a star and I don’t think everybody was pleased with that.”
The Knicks won a total of seven playoff games during Anthony’s years there, missing the playoffs in his final four seasons. It’s hard to look past these offenses and this lack of results.
But there I go again, launching into an explanation of my dislike for Anthony, trying to show that he had this coming.
Rather than celebrating, I should look for lessons in the Tragedy of Carmelo Anthony, and maybe even hope that he can have a moment of clarity like Lear at the end of the play. After those lost years in New York, the time for true greatness has passed — but Anthony could finish his career right. Maybe what we’re seeing from him in Portland is the answer. He could continue to borrow a page from the mythic creature everyone calls Olympic Melo, draining threes and grinding a little harder on defense. No more jab-steps, no more laziness, no more ego — a hint of light at the end of the tunnel. That’s a lot to ask, but if he can change, then I can change.
And I might even be happy to see him finish right.
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Parker Hjelmberg is a contributor for UNPLUGG’D who dabbles at the intersection of movies, television, and NBA basketball. To follow along with him on Twitter, click here.