Written by Kelly Dwyer at YahooSports.com
Wes Unseld was 32 when he won his first NBA championship, as was Oscar Robertson. Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen were 31, 32 and (about to turn) 33 when they won their first title. Dirk Nowitzki was a week away from turning 33 when he won his first ring. Clyde Drexler was a week away from turning 33 when he won his. David Robinson, who recently warned the Golden State Warriors to enjoy what they have (before they’ve taken in a title with Kevin Durant) was a few months away from turning 34. Jerry West had just turned 34 when he won his.
Carmelo Anthony is 32. The second-best player on his team this year will be 21, his franchise’s top free agent prize of the offseason is a 31-year old center who has fallen off significantly over the last few years due to injury (while shooting 38 percent and averaging 4.3 points a game in 2015-16), and his new point guard has looked a shell of himself since three knee surgeries (though that hasn’t stopped him from declaring his new squad a “superteam”). Anthony is not surrounded by a championship core.
As such, the idea is that Carmelo Anthony, already past his prime, will never win an NBA title because … y’know, Knicks.
The Knicks are the bad team that he decided to tie his fortunes to in 2014 to the tune of a five-year, $124 million contract with a clause that prevented New York from dealing Anthony away without Carmelo’s consent. The team he forced a trade to in 2011, pushing New York to deal several needed assets that could have been retained while signing Anthony as a free agent outright the following offseason.
Anthony’s one-year NCAA coach, Syracuse talker Jim Boeheim, is already just about writing off Carmelo’s chances at an NBA championship. Not because his one-year unpaid star has done anything wrong with his career, but because his series of NBA general managers has failed ‘Melo.
From Mike Waters at Syracuse.com:
“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.”
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