Spring Break
The Daily OrangeSchonbrun: For Anthony and Greene, legacies couldn't be more different
By Zach Schonbrun
Posted: 10/20/08, 4:45 AM EST Section: Sports
Hours before the opening tip, long before the Carrier Dome would open to the public, fans peered over the Gate B balcony overlooking the back entrance to the stadium, anticipating the Denver Nuggets' team bus to arrive.
Thursday's headlines caught Shaquille O'Neal in tabloid-like hourly updates - he ordered waffles on Marshall Street and popcorn at the Carousel Center? But who was he with? - and, in the greater NBA universe, perhaps Allen Iverson, Steve Nash and Grant Hill have better Q ratings as bonafide basketball celebs.
Carmelo Anthony, though, has a second home like few others, and fans here in Syracuse oozed to his every breath. They swelled around the tunnel before he entered for warm-ups. Their camera flashes lit the Dome during his introduction. And in the game's closing minutes, despite Anthony having already taken off his sneakers, they chanted to Nuggets' head coach George Karl: "We want Melo!"
Idolization was personified, and the 24-year-old soaked in the nightlong embrace from a community that hardly knew him. No one wondered whether the one-year wonder would embrace back.
"It brought back a lot of memories here tonight," Anthony said. He spoke of revisiting Cosmo's, using his old locker and stopping by the construction site of the Carmelo K. Anthony basketball practice facility being erected next to Manley Field House.
No one asked if he'd need to Mapquest his way there.
In the five years since he left, as his NBA image has inflated, he has grown to encompass Syracuse as much as any athlete ever. He's the defining basketball player for a university that has quickly become a basketball school. And unlike the others - Jim Brown, Donovan McNabb or Ernie Davis - he was on campus for only one year.
Fans filled the student section, yet no current student was enrolled in 2003. Members of the present men's basketball team sat in wide-eyed amazement along the sidelines, though its two freshmen, Mookie Jones and Kris Joseph, weren't even in high school when Anthony left town.
Thursday's headlines caught Shaquille O'Neal in tabloid-like hourly updates - he ordered waffles on Marshall Street and popcorn at the Carousel Center? But who was he with? - and, in the greater NBA universe, perhaps Allen Iverson, Steve Nash and Grant Hill have better Q ratings as bonafide basketball celebs.
Carmelo Anthony, though, has a second home like few others, and fans here in Syracuse oozed to his every breath. They swelled around the tunnel before he entered for warm-ups. Their camera flashes lit the Dome during his introduction. And in the game's closing minutes, despite Anthony having already taken off his sneakers, they chanted to Nuggets' head coach George Karl: "We want Melo!"
Idolization was personified, and the 24-year-old soaked in the nightlong embrace from a community that hardly knew him. No one wondered whether the one-year wonder would embrace back.
"It brought back a lot of memories here tonight," Anthony said. He spoke of revisiting Cosmo's, using his old locker and stopping by the construction site of the Carmelo K. Anthony basketball practice facility being erected next to Manley Field House.
No one asked if he'd need to Mapquest his way there.
In the five years since he left, as his NBA image has inflated, he has grown to encompass Syracuse as much as any athlete ever. He's the defining basketball player for a university that has quickly become a basketball school. And unlike the others - Jim Brown, Donovan McNabb or Ernie Davis - he was on campus for only one year.
Fans filled the student section, yet no current student was enrolled in 2003. Members of the present men's basketball team sat in wide-eyed amazement along the sidelines, though its two freshmen, Mookie Jones and Kris Joseph, weren't even in high school when Anthony left town.
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