Carmelo Anthony said some things to ESPN.com’s Marc Stein that people will crucify him for.
Let’s start there:
“Most athletes don’t have an opportunity to say that they won a gold medal, better yet three gold medals,” Anthony said. “I would be very happy walking away from the game knowing that I’ve given the game everything I have, knowing I played on a high level at every level: high school, college, won [a championship at Syracuse] in college and possibly three gold medals.
“I can look back on it when my career is over — if I don’t have an NBA championship ring — and say I had a great career.”
These are not tone-deaf comments, despite the knee-jerk reaction of ridiculing Carmelo Anthony for downplaying the absence of an NBA title, or even substantive playoff success. Anthony has said some stupid things in the past. This is not, by any stretch, one of those things.
Anthony is essentially saying that he won’t view his career as a failure, or a disappointment, if he doesn’t win an NBA title, and that his soon-to-be three gold medals, along with a national championship in college, will be a part of why he feels that way. There is nothing wrong with that. It makes sense. It’s accurate.
Look, Carmelo Anthony isn’t perfect. He isn’t LeBron James. Never has been. Those early career comparisons screwed him over in many respects. The way he forced himself to the New York Knicks, at the expense of almost their entire core, remains, to this day, one of the most self-destructive moves in league history. You can even criticize him for sticking with New York, beyond 2014, on crappy and mediocre teams, squandering his prime-most years away.
But you cannot, and should not, say that he’s ignorant because he’s reaching a point in his career where he won’t let what he doesn’t have, and what he might not ever get, entirely shape the way he views his life’s body of work.
