Carmelo Anthony is unlikely to win an NBA title with the New York Knicks. Jim Boeheim acknowledged that much. And in today’s culture of defining legacies, a championship seems to be the required element to validate a player’s career.

Anthony has won three Olympic gold medals, though, which is more than any player in Team USA history. He also led SU to its only national championship in 2003. When asked about how Anthony will be remembered when all is said and done, Boeheim chose to look at his entire basketball resume and the effect he’s had on his NBA teams rather than what will likely be a professional career without a title.

“He’s never been on a team that even had a remote chance of winning an NBA title,” Boeheim said Tuesday afternoon in the Melo Center. “As a player all you can do is try and make your team better and every team he’s been on, he’s made a lot better.

“You look back on your total basketball experience … he had a great high school team, he won the NCAA championship and he won three gold medals in the Olympics. So that’s a pretty good resume.”

Anthony turned Denver into a contender even though the Nuggets couldn’t sniff the Lakers and Spurs of the early 2000s. In his five full seasons in New York, the Knicks haven’t advanced past the Eastern Conference semifinals and have struggled in losing seasons each of the past three years.

After Sunday’s gold medal game, Anthony got emotional discussing the win over Serbia, even though he’s been in the same spot twice before.

“I think it meant a lot to him because he’s had a couple bad years obviously in New York,” Boeheim said. “The reason I wanted him to go was to have a good basketball experience for himself and be the leader of this team.”

This year, Team USA didn’t have LeBron James, Steph Curry, Chris Paul or Dwyane Wade. Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson, Kyrie Irving and DeAndre Jordan were the main players alongside Anthony instead.

And even through there were some bumps in the road in the form of single-digit wins, the seasoned vet added to a resume that some view as incomplete, but one Boeheim considers just fine.

“When we were struggling there, he was a really good voice in the locker room, keep everybody together,” Boeheim said. “Carmelo was the unquestioned leader in this team.”

Published on August 23, 2016 at 3:48 pm

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