How will we remember Carmelo Anthony?

In the summer of 2003, the NBA was adrift, in desperate need of a new identity. It had been five years since Michael Jordan last suited up for the Bulls, but a lesser version of him had just retired after two unremarkable seasons with the Washington Wizards, closing the door on the league using him to draw in audiences.

New stars had emerged, but Allen Iverson’s aggressive embrace of hip-hop culture rankled league executives who were uncomfortable with his image. Kobe Bryant had seemed like the heir apparent to Jordan, stylizing his gameplay in accordance with the recently retired master, but in July, Bryant would be accused of rape, casting a dark cloud over him and the NBA at large, who had placed so many hopes in him as the league’s new standard bearer.

Accordingly, the draft that summer took on a larger importance than was normal. There were several promising players in the talent pool this year, with LeBron James being the consensus number one pick and Darko Milicic, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, and Dwyane Wade appearing to be great consolation prizes for those teams drafting after the Cavaliers. LeBron was the prodigy, the chosen one from Akron, Ohio while Carmelo, after just one season at Syracuse, had achieved everything a young college player could hope for, leading the Orangemen to their first national championship in school history while being named the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player. It appeared to be a Godsend to the NBA.

Here, as if arriving from central casting, were two young players entering the league — promising, generational talents that had the potential to transform the NBA’s competitive landscape. They were likable, authentic, and great at basketball. Also, with their being drafted into two different conferences, there was the chance for them to face each other in the Finals year after year, establishing a rivalry that could make them the new Magic and Bird, defining the 2000s and 2010s the way their forebears had the 1980s. At least this was the hope.

As rookies, both showed the promise that made them such prizes for their teams. LeBron won Rookie of the Year, while Carmelo transformed the 17-65 Nuggets of the year before into a playoff team. In the years ahead, though, LeBron would show himself to be the far superior player, winning two MVPs and leading an otherwise depressing Cavs team to the Finals in 2007. The story was not over yet, and those who hoped for a longstanding rivalry to emerge still had at least some reason to hope for what had once seemed inevitable.

In the summer of 2010, LeBron James took his talents to South Beach, forming an alliance with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh that seemed sure to dominate the NBA for years to come. For the Nuggets, LeBron’s leaving placed fear in their hearts for their own future. Carmelo’s contract was due to expire following the 2011 season and they did not want to lose him for nothing, especially after it became an open secret that he wanted to play for the Knicks or the Nets. The Knicks, always eager to make a big splash opted to trade the bulk of their young core in order to acquire Carmelo and a thirty-four year old Chauncey Billups. Following the trade, the Knicks only won half their games, earning the sixth seed where they were summarily swept by the Boston Celtics.

Carmelo’s remaining years in New York were desultory. His style of play, a style that had once seemed so effortless in its smoothness now seemed effortless in a different sense, obligatory, going through the motions, without passion or hope for the future. He had a no-trade clause, and his refusal to waive it was no longer due to actually wanting to play for the Knicks, or because he held some hope for the team’s future, but due to pride, a desire to outlast team president Phil Jackson, who had impugned him through the media relentlessly.

Carmelo was no longer the toast of the town, the savior who had arrived six years prior, but a reminder of a promissory note that remained unsigned. The young Unicorn, Kristaps Porzingis, was now the reason for hope, but this was a hope that was not expected to pay off for years. It was an awkward contrast — Carmelo being a symbol of hope unfulfilled while Porzingis represented hope that was still sure to come. When Melo was named to the All-Star team as an injury replacement in 2017, it seemed more like a nod to his reputation than an honoring of his actual play that season.

While Carmelo’s career dwindled in New York, his draftmates LeBron, Wade, and Bosh, won two titles together in Miami, providing a capstone to their tremendous careers, after which LeBron won a third title in Cleveland. Yet despite how far Carmelo had fallen in the NBA hierarchy, fans couldn’t fully let go of the idea that greatness was still just around the corner. It was not enough for him to be a 10-time All-Star, a surefire Hall of Famer when so much more had been expected. So we still placed our hopes in him, but in an alternate version, who we termed Olympic Melo.

Carmelo had been on the bronze-medal winning team in 2004, but hardly played, averaging less than seven minutes per game. In 2008, though, as a member of the Redeem Team, Anthony was a leader as one of the few players who had previous Olympic experience, despite his relative youth. 2012 was his breakout Olympic performance though, when the idea of Olympic Melo truly crystallized.

It was in the third game of group play, against Nigeria, that Carmelo scored a United States Olympic record 37 points by going 13-of-16 from the field, including an unbelievable 10-of-12 on 3-pointers. Carmelo gave a truly astonishing performance, the proving ground for anyone who believes that the hot hand empirically exists. While that game was his peak performance in those Olympics, he still averaged the second-most points on the team, helping lead them to a gold medal. Carmelo repeated those feats the following Olympics in 2016, again making it appear that there was indeed a switch he could flip, if only he wanted it enough, or if only he was put in the right situation.

After each of these showings, fans were left to wonder why Carmelo was capable of such feats on the international stage, but unable to lead his own teams to the playoffs. It was not that Carmelo simply found an extra gear in Olympic play, but rather that the context was different, allowing him to play to his strengths. Great as Carmelo could be while isolated near the perimeter, going mano-a-mano with his defender, that is not the most reliable way to score baskets in the modern NBA.

Furthermore, Carmelo has almost always been relied upon as the go-to scorer on his teams, the superstar, the one the team’s fortunes rise and fall with. On the Olympics, no such pressure was applied to him and he could stand on the perimeter and wait for passes from the interior where he could just catch-and-shoot or cut at right moment and receive a dump-off pass while standing in the paint, leading to an easy lay-up or dunk. Perhaps, in his NBA career, Carmelo had simply been miscast as a leading man when he would have been best in a supporting role.

When Carmelo finally waived his no-trade clause to become a member of the Oklahoma City Thunder in the summer of 2017, hope grew that we would get to see Olympic Melo in the NBA. Freed from the burden of carrying a team by himself, he could be a complementary player, waiting for kick-out passes, ready to knock down open shot after open shot. It never worked out that way. All season, Carmelo seemed like a shadow of his former self, unwilling to accept the inexorable passage of time, but neither the decline in ability nor the inability to accept it should be all that shocking.

This was Carmelo’s 15th season as an NBA player, and it would have been foolhardy to expect him to continue producing as he did in his prime. Also, he had always been the best player on his team, the one who determined both the team’s ceiling and its floor. Rather than accepting that being the focal point of his team’s offense was no longer what is best for them, he wanted to shoot his team to victory, as if it was 2009 all over again.

Occasionally, the old Melo returned, smoothly filling the lane and laying it in, facing up his defender and outmaneuvering them, but these occurrences were rare, the exception. More often, he looked confused, adrift, wondering why the ball is not coming his way more often and why the shots aren’t falling when it is. It all coalesced in the opening round playoff loss against the Jazz where Carmelo was an absolute liability. The Thunder were over 30 points worse per 100 possessions with him on the floor than when he was off the floor, per Basketball-Reference.com. He showed no inclination to switch on defense and his shots refused to fall, barely making one out of every five 3-pointers as his legs seemed to lack the lift necessary to shoot effectively. Fans of Anthony are left, on the one hand, to wish for his quick retirement so he does not embarrass himself further, while also hoping he returns so that this is not how he goes out.

When Carmelo asked to be traded from the Denver Nuggets, he was labelled, along with LeBron James, as a coward, a selfish player who wanted to win a championship “the easy way.” Of course, there is no such thing as a guaranteed or easy championship in any sport but more importantly, winning absolves any perceived sin in the public consciousness. Therefore, when LeBron won two championships and made four trips to the Finals in his four-year tenure with the Heat, the perception of his move changed from selfish to shrewd.

Meanwhile, in Anthony’s seven seasons on the Knicks, they only made the playoffs thrice and only won one series, confirming not the intelligence of the move, but the silliness of it. The lack of success confirmed to fans that his desire to move to New York, coupled with his insistence on remaining the team’s number one option, was shortsighted, revealing Anthony to not have the priorities fans hope for from their superstars.

Next: Paul Pierce on the Celtics, longevity and life after basketball

In another few years, Carmelo Anthony will be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Even if he retired today, his induction is all but certain. He has impeccable credentials already — he has scored over 25,000 points; he is a top-20 all-time scorer in NBA history, a 10-time All Star, and a six-time All-NBA team member. Anyone who quibbles over his lack of a championship is ignoring that even without a title, Carmelo will go down as one of the greatest scorers and most feared offensive players of the 2000s and early 2010s.

The problem is one of expectations. When you expect a player to be a transformative, generational superstar, it looks like a disappointment when he ends up being more comparable Alex English and Adrian Dantley than the Hall of Famers he entered the league with. Carmelo is a rare player, both in terms of talent, and now, in terms of how he is remembered: as a Hall of Famer and a disappointment simultaneously.