The Melo story: 5 wrong turns in Carmelo Anthony's career

Carmelo Anthony's career is a classic what-if scenario. This is one of the greatest scorers of all time, a player with a jump shot so pure that he's the only player in NBA history to score 50 points in a game without a single one of them coming in the paint.

Maligned all over the internet for only having a couple of jab step moves up his sleeve on isolation possessions these days, he is a far cry from the scoring machine that he was for a large chunk of his career with the Nuggets and the New York Knicks.

Talent is not enough to win championships in the league. It takes sacrifice and a willingness to be coached and play different styles of basketball, getting out of one's comfort zone while doing so - none of which Melo has conceivably been successful at.

Let's take a look at 5 of the wrong decisions taken by him and the people around him that have shaped his career the way that it's turned out.

#1 Signing a 5-year contract with the Nuggets

The summer of 2010 saw LeBron James and Chris Bosh join forces with Dwyane Wade at Miami. Long before this happened, however, the superteam that was supposed to form had Anthony in place of Bosh - the three superstars who entered the league in 2003 as part of a fabled draft class.

The reason Anthony got left out of this chance to form such a team was that unlike James, Bosh and Wade, who signed 4-year contract extensions in 2006 with their franchises, Melo opted to sign a 5-year deal with the Nuggets. This happened because Melo believed he had a legitimate shot at championship contention in Colorado.

He ended up with only one Conference Finals appearance in 7 seasons with Denver.

#2 The Knicks-Nuggets brawl

(FILE) Carmelo Anthony Suspended For 15 Games

Early in his 4th professional season, the Denver Nuggets played the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden. The Nuggets had already secured a blowout win when Knicks guard Mardy Collins flagrantly fouled JR Smith. A number of players started getting involved in the melee as Nate Robinson rugby-tackled JR into the crowd in an altercation.

This ticked Melo off, as he began pushing and shoving on the other Knicks players trying to end the brawl. His teammates tried to hold him back, but he succeeded in throwing a punch on Collins before backing away.

Despite his actions being less violent than Nate Robinson or JR's, Melo was handed the longest suspension among everyone at 15 games. The Nuggets were left fighting for a playoff spot all season long thereafter, and it took a 9-1 run in their last 10 games to secure the 6th seed in the West before they got knocked out by the Spurs in the first round of playoffs.

#3 Demanding a trade to New York

At the start of the 2010-11 season, Melo declined a contract extension from the Nuggets and demanded a trade to New York. The two franchises failed to reach an agreement then, which led to a midseason trade involving Chauncey Billups at the All-Star break trade deadline.

If only he'd waited until free agency and signed with a team better positioned for playoff success, he could have had the championship ring or rings that players of his caliber usually end up with. Instead, the Knicks continued to be a franchise hit by gross mismanagement right from the ownership level, and Melo had to waste his prime with them.

#4 Electing to stay with the Knicks in 2014

Having already failed at making the playoffs with the Knicks in the previous season as New York finished 37-45, Anthony stood at a real crossroads in his career after opting out of the final year of his 4-year deal with the Knicks in the summer of 2014.

It must have been abundantly clear to him that he had no shot at title contention after 3 years with the franchise. But Melo took the decision to spurn the possibility of joining the Houston Rockets with Dwight Howard and James Harden, as well as that of joining Joakim Noah, Derrick Rose and Jimmy Butler with the Bulls.

He signed a 5-year contract with the Knicks and failed to make the playoffs in the Eastern Conference in any of his 3 seasons with that franchise thereafter.

#5 Joining the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2017

Oklahoma City Thunder v Charlotte Hornets

If at all Anthony was to boost his chances of winning a championship in 2017-18, waiving his no-trade clause to depart for Oklahoma City was not the best he could have done. The Thunder had already traded for Paul George, who would have been a clear-cut second option given his form in 2016-17 with the Indiana Pacers.

Anthony became a spot-up shooter with the Oklahoma City Thunder, whose offense took about 2 months to get into gear last season. This turned Anthony into a spot-up shooter by and large, and this is not a role that he'd done well in 14 years of playing isolation-dominant offense. He needed to get enough shots in every game before getting into a rhythm, and this caused the Thunder offense to stutter when Andre Roberson went down with an injury.

The Thunder managed only one win more in both the regular season as well as the playoffs. Anthony was traded to the Hawks, who waived him in order to enable him to join the Rockets for this season. Only time will tell if this will turn out better for him than his stint at Oklahoma City.

Edited by Yash Matange