Carmelo Anthony NBA Title Never Happening, Says Jim Boeheim
A Carmelo Anthony NBA title is not likely to ever happen, according to the head coach of Syracuse, Jim Boeheim, who also coached Anthony this month to Olympic gold.
Apparently, winning yet another gold medal in basketball at the Olympics will not help Mr. Anthony win an NBA Championship. At this point, who cares who wins at the Olympics anyway?
Sure, it was a big deal back in 1992 when we had the first ever “Dream Team.” This came after the U.S. Olympic Committee finally agreed to allow pros to compete in the Olympics.
The whole world tuned in to watch as Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Patrick Ewing, and others reasserted American sovereignty in the one game that the country can truly claim to have invented from scratch. Of course, that was then.
But it has gotten boring. Rooting for the USA Olympic basketball team every four years is kind of like rooting for the sun to rise or for Microsoft to make more money.
A Carmelo Anthony NBA title would certainly be something much more exciting than seeing Carmelo win yet another Olympic Gold. No one really cares if an American wins the gold in Olympic tennis, certainly not nearly as much as when one wins Wimbledon or the French Open. The same holds true for the golf players.
Boeheim sang Anthony’s praises to the Syracuse Post Standard but expressed a lack of faith that his current team the New York Knicks could win a championship anytime soon.
"He's never been on a team that even had a remote chance of winning an NBA title."
—Jim Boeheimhttps://t.co/e0xaO7fDP7— ESPN (@espn) August 24, 2016
Mr. Anthony should understand this by now. The 32-year-old forward played for Syracuse in college and has completed 13 seasons in the NBA playing for Denver and the New York Knicks. His having played for poor teams does not change the fact that Anthony has failed to win an NBA title.
A Carmelo Anthony NBA Title will probably not happen. Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said that it is highly unlikely, reported in the Syracuse Post-Standard.
“He’s unlikely to win an NBA title. 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.”
There are now three Carmelo Anthony titles — that is, gold medals — but no NBA title. As pointed out above, this is no feat when compared to winning an NBA Championship. Just ask Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing. Jordan already had two before the 1992 Dream Team and Ewing never won even one NBA title.
Boeheim coached Carmelo on this year’s team and was impressed by Anthony’s play, adding that he really helped his teammates. The coach explained that Carmelo Anthony “was a good voice in the locker room. He kept everybody together. We had so many new guys that weren’t used to, some of them hadn’t come off the bench in some time and it was a struggle for them, but everything came together.”
The Syracuse coach also pointed to the fact that Anthony helped teams win wherever he has gone, from high school to winning an NCAA Championship with Syracuse and of course at the Olympic. But in all of these cases, he was blessed with playing for a good team. Would Michael Jordan have won with the Bulls without Scottie Pippin?
A Carmelo Anthony NBA title will probably not happen in New York with the Knicks and Boeheim explained why.
“He wants to win in New York. I know the general opinion is if [new additions Joakim] Noah and [Derrick] Rose are healthy then they’ll be a better team. It’s just a question of if they will be healthy. They’ve been off and on the last two years. They’ve both been hurt. I think if both those guys are healthy, it certainly would make a big difference and [Kristaps] Porzingis continuing to progress. If those things happen, they can be better.”
Carmelo Anthony was sure to give praise to his Olympic teammates, acknowledging their role in his victory, in this post to Instagram.
Did Carmelo Anthony make a mistake by going to New York as a free agent two years ago instead of another team? Probably! That is if he really wants to win.
Carmelo Anthony for his part told ESPN that it is something special for an athlete to be able to win three gold medals in the Olympics in three different years.
“Most athletes don’t have an opportunity to say that they won a gold medal, better yet three gold medals,” Anthony bragged.
Everyone knows that it’s the NBA title which is coveted and not Olympic gold. But Carmelo swears that even if he never wins a championship, he will be able to “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.”
Meanwhile, USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo sang Carmelo Anthony’s praises on SiriusXM NBA Radio.
Colangelo explained that coming off his success at the Olympics will make Carmelo a better player in the upcoming season and that this will help the Knicks, saying, “I think it bodes well for the Knicks as it relates to his season this year.”
After the 2012 Olympics, where the team also won gold, Anthony led the Knicks to a 54-28 record and the Atlantic Division title.
But that was four years ago when Carmelo was younger. Anthony has three years to go on a $124 million deal, which he signed with the Knicks in 2014.
Will a Carmelo Anthony NBA title happen before he retires? Probably not, unless he leaves the Knicks for an already built team like Cleveland or Golden State.
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