DENVER — For five NBA seasons, the baby-faced kid from Baltimore with the killer smile, can't-miss cornrows and mellow rap was regarded as one of pro basketball's most accomplished cold-blooded scorers.
And, really, not much else.
"Oh, he's nasty," marvels the Los Angeles Lakers' Kobe Bryant, a friend who says Carmelo Anthony's genial off-court disposition conceals his competitiveness. "Put him on that basketball court, and that's a different 'Melo. Some other players, you bang them and they shy away. He loves contact. He is a throwback, man."
PHYSICAL PLAY: Nuggets-Lakers series gets chippy
The Denver Nuggets forward also had another rep. "Knucklehead," he says.
For the last month, the former Syracuse star has knuckled down to play the best basketball of his life. Today is a biggie: Game 5 of the Western Conference finals against the Lakers.
The series is deadlocked, but Anthony already has escaped the ignominy of five first-round flameouts. Game 6 is Friday in Los Angeles, where he hopes to celebrate his 25th birthday by blowing out the candles on the highly decorated top-seeded Lakers.
The boy is becoming a man, losing the adolescent braids and emerging as a reliable force for a franchise seeking to advance to its first NBA Finals since joining the league in 1976. He is coming of age, learning how to become a leader, not a follower and how to become a pre-eminent all-around player, not merely a stunning scorer.
As his teammates warmed up for Game 4, Anthony remained in the dressing room, legs limp as linguini. He vomited. He was given fluids intravenously to combat the effects of a stomach virus.
"No, no, no, never that," he said, when asked if his status was in doubt.
Lacking energy, he finished with 15 points and a noticeable limp. He's OK.
As a rookie, Anthony lugged the Nuggets on his back to the playoffs, one year after a 17-victory season. But those early playoff exits did nothing to enhance him as anything but a pure fill-'er-up scorer who paid cursory attention to the dirty work of defense and rebounding.
"There have been a lot of players not get out of the first round multiple years," Nuggets coach George Karl says. "It's a burden on your confidence and psyche."
So was that word the pundits used.
Knucklehead.
Anthony privately cringed.
At 19, he had joined the NBA to great fanfare as the third overall selection in 2003 after the Detroit Pistons passed him over for Darko Milicic. Anthony possessed multidimensional scoring, championship pedigree and a disarming smile. He is a member of a gifted draft class that included LeBron James and Dwyane Wade.
As his peers' careers and public personas ascended toward hoops heaven, Anthony's descended. The Nugget wasn't fool's gold. But he wasn't a 24-karat player.
His body looked soft as cookie dough; his mind was distracted by the foibles of youth and instant riches.
Immaturity and poor judgment became his crew, on and off the court.
His bloated police mug shot on the Internet was not the way to go.
"I've had my fair share of trials and tribulations," Anthony says as 2-year-old son Kiyan, born to fiancée and TV host LaLa Vasquez, sits on his lap. "I don't want (Kiyan) going to school and (hearing), 'What's wrong with your dad?' He changed my life completely, my thought processes. It made me grow up overnight. If it doesn't, something is wrong.
"After my last incident (a DUI arrest in 2008), I was like, 'All right, man, this is it.' I was scared. At that moment, it felt like it was me against the world."
As a player, "I wanted to be a leader, but didn't know how to be one. I was going through so much, so nobody looked up to me. I said one thing and went out and did another. I'm putting positive people around me now. But it starts with me. If it doesn't, nobody's going to follow."
Feeling unstoppable
Anthony is trying to do it outside in communities, where he donates to charitable causes with his foundation, and inside NBA arenas.
For these playoffs, he is averaging 27.1 points, 6.2 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 1.8 steals. During a five-game stretch, he averaged 35 points. "I don't feel like anybody can stop me," he says. "If I'm in a zone, I feel anything I throw up is going in."
He didn't make the 2009 All-Star team. He missed 13 games (broken right hand, sore right elbow) and suffers from tendinitis in the same elbow, icing it down, along with his knees, after games.
His versatility enables Karl to give him the ultimate green (shooting) light.
At 6-8, 232 pounds, Anthony really is more of a guard disguised in forward's garb. He operates effectively from the post, has a nifty midrange game and is a capable, though sometimes impatient, beyond-the-arc shooter. Deceptively strong — Bryant calls him "The Bear" — he is capable of penetrating the paint.
"At small forward, there isn't a player in the NBA who scores from as many spots," the Lakers' Pau Gasol says.
Here's the scary part: "I don't think 'Melo is anywhere near his ceiling," ESPN analyst Avery Johnson says.
The Lakers' Lamar Odom's first memories of Anthony are when he played at Oak Hill (Va.) Academy prep school.
"If he put effort into everything, there is nothing he can't do. He's fun to watch. Effortless — a natural. For guys who are that good, that (can be) a problem."
Not everything has come easily. Anthony was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., but his family moved. His father, of Puerto Rican descent, died when Anthony was 2.
"As a teen growing up in the inner city, and not having that male figure to guide me through the ropes, you tend to go left when you should turn (right)," he says. "My mother (gave) me advice and discipline, but it's not quite the same. I had to figure out a lot on my own."
His management has engaged in an image makeover for Anthony, stashing the urban wear on game days.
"He is more focused off the court, which has helped him on the court," manager Robert "Bay" Frazier says.
Says Nuggets teammate Anthony Carter, "He's showing how much he has matured, and he's trying to go in the right step to win a championship."
The Cleveland Cavaliers' James is NBA MVP. The Miami Heat's Wade wears gaudy championship bling. As their statures and endorsements rose, Anthony suffered several broadside hits.
In 2004, marijuana was discovered in his backpack. Charges were dropped. Anthony unwittingly appeared in the controversial Stop Snitchin' DVD, which warned Baltimore citizens not to cooperate with police. He apologized.
In 2006, he sucker-punched the New York Knicks' Mardy Collins in a brawl, then backpedaled out of harm's way. The NBA suspended him for 15 games.
"(When) you go from a boy to man overnight, nobody (says), 'You shouldn't do this,' " he says. "I had to grow up to realize I didn't need 'yes' men."
It wasn't until his arrest in Denver last year for driving under the influence that he was genuinely jolted. In June, he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and received a year's probation. The NBA suspended him for two games this season.
Making things right
Anthony evolves, as player and person. In March, he refused to come out of a game for a substitute. Karl suspended him for one game. Occasionally, he still lollygags on transition defense and commits technical fouls. His on-court inspiration, beyond family, is threefold.
His experiences with Team USA in the Beijing Olympics opened his eyes about the game's incontrovertible fundamentals: Basketball is about sharing, communicating, expending maximum effort.
"With Kobe (there), a switch clicked," ESPN's Johnson says. "You have to come into the season in better shape, you have to be more professional and you go back to the gym at night and shoot more. He saw Kobe getting up to lift weights, then coming to practice and not coasting."
Anthony learned what it took to play lock-down defense. He was forced to guard bigger, stronger players.
"Whoever the best player is, let me take him," he says. "Everybody and their mother knows I can (score) in my sleep. This is a team game, not a one-man show." Yes, it's the "Billups Effect."
Chauncey Billups says his teammate "probably is going to be a Hall of Famer." But it wasn't until the Nuggets acquired the savvy point guard last November — after Denver pulled the plug on the failed Allen Iverson experiment — that Anthony began to fathom the possibilities.
"He has kind of settled him," Lakers assistant coach Brian Shaw says. "I don't want to say (Anthony) was wild, but he seems more refined. He has started to mature, started to take responsibility."
Lastly, a sit-down chat with Michael Jordan after the Olympics cemented Anthony's reformed attitude.
"MJ said, 'I'm not telling you what to do, but this is my suggestion,' " Anthony recalls. "His (advice) was to control my own life. Did I want to be a good player — or the best? I said, 'OK, I'm going to do it.' I know I can control my destiny. It took me some 'me time' to sit down and figure out what I wanted to be."
Anthony pauses and smiles with little-boy glee. "Look at me now. It worked. People are seeing now that I've turned the corner. There ain't no turning back."
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