Carmelo Anthony: First-ballot Hall of Famer, all-time bucket-getter, and so much more

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Over the past quarter-century, the NBA game has largely transformed from a grimy, physical, elbows-and-in slugfest into a more streamlined, faster-paced and immaculately spaced factory for creating layups, 3-pointers and free throws. This shift has generated the most efficient and effective offenses the sport has ever seen. It has also generated no shortage of arguments about whether said sea change is, in and of itself, a good thing — about the scourge of stylistic homogeneity, about forsaking art for math, and about whether something might be lost in the relentless pursuit of increased efficiency. (Sports, as ever: a metaphor for life.)

Reasonable people can disagree on the relative merits of back-in-the-day ball and the post-Moreyball model. (Unreasonable people can, too. And they do. Most hours of the day and night. On pretty much every sports television, radio and podcast outlet.) You’d like to think, though, that even the most ardent adherent of the modern game can feel stirred by watching a heavyweight deliver knockouts in a phone booth; can find joy in watching a craftsman create something simple and effective with tools honed over countless hours; can see the beauty in pristine and refined footwork, timing and form translate into points.

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Man, it was fun to watch Carmelo Anthony cook.

Anthony often occupies a central space in those old-school-vs.-new-school debates: a player who rose to international superstardom as a young man by mass-producing buckets in the midrange, and who in his mid-30s found himself on the outskirts of a league that had migrated to the perimeter without him. Come this summer, though, he’ll occupy a different space: the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

There will be people who arch an eyebrow at Melo’s enshrinement, pointing to a résumé that not only lacks an NBA championship, but that featured just one trip beyond the second round of the playoffs in 19 seasons — when he teamed with Chauncey Billups to push the Denver Nuggets to the 2009 Western Conference finals, where they ran aground against Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol and the eventual champion Los…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/carmelo-anthony-first-ballot-hall-of-famer-all-time-bucket-getter-and-so-much-more-222235599.html

Author : Dan Devine

Publish date : 2025-04-02 22:22:00

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