There WAS one thing completely different about him from the beginning. The early 2000s, after Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett made the bounce straight from highschool to the NBA, it was onerous for any participant with a rep to even ponder spending time in school, since there have been no guidelines on the books protecting them from declaring.
Carmelo Anthony went one other manner. As so a lot of his contemporaries — a number of these names misplaced to the vapors of historical past — declared for the draft, Anthony declared one thing else after his junior yr at Towson Catholic Excessive: he could be going to Syracuse. Anthony was 6-foot-6 and 180 kilos, and self-aware sufficient that he believed NBA scouts who thought him too skinny for the league at that time.
So he went to Oak Hill Academy for a yr, beefed up his grades and his physique. Jim Boeheim saved tabs from a distance on his prized prospect that entire winter of 2001-02. He’d been to the Ultimate 4 twice already, 1987 and 1996, and thought he may be constructing towards one other one ultimately. Carmelo’s mom, Mary, had insisted her son would play at Syracuse for not less than two years.
Boeheim figured that was the window.
