Ladies and gentlemen, Carmelo Anthony has officially secured his place among basketball’s immortals.
On Saturday, the Brooklyn-born forward was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, closing the chapter on a career that spanned nearly two decades and firmly established him as one of the game’s bona fide walking buckets.
Love or hate him, Melo’s history won’t ever be forgotten after this moment.
Anthony’s enshrinement placed Anthony alongside a strong
2025 class that included BIG3 rookie Dwight Howard and a trio of W superheroines in Sue Bird, Sylvia Fowles, and Maya Moore.
“Pardon my language, but damn. Tonight I just don’t step into the Hall of Fame, I carry the echoes of every voice that ever told me I couldn’t. I had to build a new road. I had to write a new ending. I never got an NBA ring. But I know what I gave to the game.” — Carmelo Anthony
Anthony’s résumé has long been viewed as Hall of Fame worthy, but that doesn’t mean the hooper had it hard to find a way to generate controversy about his position in NBA history, before and after retiring.
For the uninitiated, Melo is a 10-time NBA All-Star, 2013 bucket champ, and three-time Olympic gold medalist. Among many others, including the GOAT “Hoodie Melo,” Anthony legitimately earned the nickname “Olympics Melo” for his dominant international performances no matter where hoops happened to be played.
Before his NBA days, adding to his odds to eventually make it to the HoF, Melo led Syracuse University to the 2003 NCAA championship in his only college season as a true freshman, putting himself on par—if not above—a certain LeBron James ahead of the 2003 NBA draft.
Against Anthony’s legacy and the main reason for controversy surrounding his name: if this were the MLB and we were talking baseball, is that it’d be mad hard to pick a hat for him to wear into the Cemetery of Legends.
Melo’s first seven seasons with the Denver Nuggets brought playoff appearances but no Finals berths, although it’s undeniable how Anthony simply brought the Nuggets back to life before Nikola Jokic (who was then handed the iconic No. 15) brought Denver to the promised land.
Following a forced trade to the New York Knicks in 2011, Melo returned home to play inside the fabled walls of Madison Square Garden, where he spent seven seasons as the face of the franchise and delivered its last playoff series victory in 2013 before the Jalen Brunson-Tom Thibodeau era changed the franchise’s outlook for real.
Back in 2013, coinciding with the aforementioned postseason, Melo prevented LeBron James from a unanimous MVP win by picking up the only first-place vote James didn’t get. A win’s a win.
Now, with his obvious HoF induction in the rearview mirror, the main question remains above MSG’s head: Was Anthony’s tenure in New York worthy of having his No. 7 lifted to the rafters?
Anthony’s New York run produced endless Knickstape highlight reels, six consecutive All-Star appearances, and more than 10,000 points in a Knicks uniform. Melo sits top 10 in several franchise categories, including three-pointers made and total scoring. That said, Melo also endured constant roster turnover—some of it because of his stubbornness to join NYC a few months ahead of time—and four head coaches, reaching the second round of the playoffs just once.
The Knicks have retired just eight numbers (10, 12, 15, 15, 19, 22, 24, 33, 613) with Patrick Ewing’s No. 33 the last to go up in 2003.
Again, do you think the Knicks will eventually raise Melo’s No. 7 to the MSG rafters?
Full Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2025
- Carmelo Anthony (Player)
- Dwight Howard (Player)
- Sue Bird (Player)
- Maya Moore (Player)
- Sylvia Fowles (Player)
- 2008 U.S. Olympic men’s team (Team)
- Billy Donovan (Coach)
- Micky Arison (Contributor / Executive)
- Danny Crawford (Referee)
