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Jim Boeheim calls a championship run for Carmelo Anthony 'unlikely'

Carmelo Anthony and Jim Boeheim take in the gold. (Getty Images)
Carmelo Anthony and Jim Boeheim take in the gold. (Getty Images)

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.

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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.”

Again, Boeheim is hardly ripping his former Orangeman. The coach acted as an assistant on the gold medal winning 2016 Men’s Basketball outfit in Rio, and he referred to Anthony as “the unquestioned leader of this team” before reminding us of this:

“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.”

You’ll recall that our Dan Devine did a pretty damn good job working through Carmelo’s “pretty good resume” in the wake of Anthony’s (infamous, for those that need dumb shows about sports to fill) comments that he would be as rightfully satisfied with three gold medals (and one bronze) in representing his country at the Olympics as he would be grabbing that elusive NBA ring. If you missed it the first time, suffice to say, the CV reflects someone with upper management material.

The title has been out of Anthony’s grasp, though, with only a 2009 Western Conference finals defeat ranking as anything substantially close to turning one of his squads into championship contenders. Even when Anthony’s 2012-13 Knicks won 54 games, the media spent most of that campaign triumphing the Melo-less Denver Nuggets as the real story of the season: A 57-win team, working in the too-tough West, playing without a star and utilizing the sorts of all-out ball movement needed to create a winner.

That Denver team was a championship contender, people wrote in March and April, while the Knicks were a peg below the Heat and Pacers in the sub-standard East.

Those Nuggets went on to lose in the first round, while Anthony and his Knicks gave the Pacers (a team that took the eventual champion Heat to seven games in the Eastern Conference finals) all it could handle in the Eastern Conference quarters.

The stigma remains, and part of it is deserved.

Carmelo Anthony was on national TV quite a bit during his first few seasons, and even when new coach George Karl upped his efficiency for a short time during Melo’s second campaign during a hot Nugget stretch late in 2004-05, Anthony still seemed to be just a hop below the Kobe, Wade, and eventually LeBrons of the world. He loved holding the ball in that triple-threat position and relying on the face up, two-point jumper, and too many of his late game heroics (and there were MANY) were left for League Pass subscribers to watch.

When various superteams that pitted him alongside Andre Miller, Allen Iverson or Chauncey Billups (with Marcus Camby, Nene, J.R. Smith and Kenyon Martin floating in and out of the picture) fell short, Anthony became antsy at the site of LeBron and Wade teaming with buddy Chris Bosh down in Miami. Unable to choose his own free agent fate due to the fact that he signed a longer post-rookie contract extension than Bosh or James did, Melo felt the lure of New York – then a playoff-bound team working with Mike D’Antoni and a rejuvenated Amar’e Stoudemire.

In forcing the deal to New York, rather than waiting out the terms of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement and free agency, Anthony undercut his potential new teammates (who were now off to Denver). The pairing with Stoudemire failed, due in equal amounts to the similarity of their games and Stoudemire’s declining knees and back, and Anthony’s best shot until now came in the form of a Knicks team in 2013 that shot and scored on a ridiculous amount of three-pointers. The upside, due to age, was limited.

There are other gripes to toss in. Anthony’s chafing at the brief Jeremy Lin bonanza. The no-trade clause. The idea that he would sign a max-contract in 2014 with a Knicks team that would go on to lose an Eastern-worst 65 games, one that was bereft of incoming first round draft picks. The bullet points, for those that want the quick wand, are in place.

Worse? There is an 11-year age gap between him and Kristaps Porzingis, Derrick Rose was routinely terrible on both ends of the court for huge chunks of 2015-16, and Joakim Noah has been a shell of himself since the Bulls ran him into the ground during the Tom Thibodeau era.

Carmelo Anthony did just average nearly 22 points, alongside a career-best 4.2 assists (on that roster) with 7.7 boards last season, and he wasn’t aged 32 for a single game of 2015-16. Things aren’t over yet, and though he is Team USA Men’s Basketball’s all-time leading scorer, he’s never been the go-to guy on any of the four Olympic teams he’s played on. He can fit in.

So, perhaps Jim Boeheim should modify his statement.

Carmelo Anthony is unlikely to win an NBA title unless the Knicks find a suitable trade partner for the three years and nearly $79 million left on his deal, and Anthony waives his no-trade clause.

The Syracuse coach doesn’t want to get into that, which is understandable. That’s basically chiding a grown man for choosing to live life as he sees fit: Carmelo Anthony clearly loves being in New York City, and who the hell can blame him?

Knicks president Phil Jackson took a chance this summer on one year of rehabilitating Rose and, yikes, four years (to the tune of nearly $19.3 million in 2020, when he’s 35) Joakim Noah, hoping to accelerate Porzingis’ ascension to stardom. He’s not going to shop Anthony around just yet, because just as Carmelo committed to the superstar life as a free agent back in 2014 over better spots to win now, Jackson did the same in throwing gobs of money at a start that just hit his 30s, on a team that badly needed to rebuild.

So, 2016-17 won’t be it. Should things fall apart again in New York, or at the very least fail to break past the state of mediocrity (the Knicks won 32 games last year), Anthony could carp, and Anthony could win.

Just as Clyde Drexler did, in 1995.

The 2017-18 New York Knicks probably won’t be as good as the 1994-95 Portland Trail Blazers were when they decided to ship Drexler (signed through 1997) to Houston; but you’d like to think the Knicks could take in a better package than PDX received (34 games of disgruntled free agent to-be Otis Thorpe, a 19th overall pick that turned into Randolph Childress) in exchange for Carmelo Anthony.

It could happen, if Anthony relents and waives that no-trade clause.

The “unlikely” designation does not completely absolve Carmelo Anthony of any part of this ring-less existence. He impatiently forced the deal to New York, he signed with the eventual 17-game winners in 2014, and he agreed (and continues to agree) to the no-trade clause. The rest, as Boeheim points out, is not his fault. Sometimes stars need other stars, and sometimes Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol are more formidable than Carmelo Anthony and Chauncey Billups.

As always, Anthony will remain a fascinating subject to consider as the years pile on.

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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!