Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim isn’t about to sugarcoat the projections for the rest of Carmelo Anthony’s NBA career just because the All-Star forward won a national championship and Olympic gold medals with him.
No, Boeheim is going to be realistic. And, according to him, Anthony doesn’t have a realistic shot at winning a title before he retires, per Syracuse.com’s Mike Waters:
“He’s unlikely to win an NBA title,” Boeheim said. “He’s never been on a team that even had a remote chance of winning an NBA title. As a player, all you can do is try to make your team better and every team he’s been on he’s made them a lot better. Denver hadn’t done anything prior to him getting there and he took them into the playoffs. They weren’t going to beat the Lakers or the Spurs. In those years, they won the championship most of the time.
“But he’s always made his team better,” added Boeheim. “It’s obvious. You look back on your total basketball experience and he had a great high school team, he won the NCAA championship and he’s won three gold medals in the Olympics. That’s a pretty good resume.”
The second part of that answer is important. Boeheim’s words will be picked apart and dissected and spun, then re-spun, into something they aren’t. He is not trashing Anthony’s career. Far from it. He’s celebrating it and lamenting Anthony’s lack of opportunity.
That part, of course, is up for debate.
So much of Anthony’s career mishaps are self-inflicted. He didn’t need to force his way to the New York Knicks in 2011; he could have waited until free agency rather than costing the team valuable assets. The Knicks never quite recovered from those negotiations.
And Anthony certainly didn’t need to re-sign with New York in 2014, when he was an unrestricted free agent. He could have sought refuge with the Houston Rockets or the Chicago Bulls, or another team that, at the time, was better positioned to win a title.
Some might believe Anthony has a chance of getting a ring now that Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah are in the Big Apple. He doesn’t. The Knicks are wildly overrated by casual fans, and this year’s cast will, for the most part, only succeed in wasting more of Anthony’s prime.
Of course, Anthony’s mistakes are officially overshadowed by those of the Knicks. He has changed as a person and player, and is now the type of cornerstone you can build around without pandering to as the lone alpha. The Knicks have thus far failed to make the most of his years-long evolution. That’s on them, and that’s what Boeheim seems to be mainly referencing above.
