Wedged between the Los Angeles Rams and New England Patriots punching their tickets to the Super Bowl and the nation celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy, one story popped up on the phones of sports fans everywhere.
Houston Rockets forward Carmelo Anthony would be traded with money to the Chicago Bulls, who would subsequently put him on waivers and, barring he clears waivers, would become a free agent.
Anthony is a first-ballot Hall of Famer without question. Just look at his track record: he brought the lone national championship to Jim Boeheim and Syracuse University, was the third overall pick in the 2003 draft, a 10-time All-star, six-time All-NBA team member and the scoring champion of 2013.
However, these glory days are long past Anthony.
The Bulls will be Anthony’s fourth team since 2017, with stops including Oklahoma City, Houston and Atlanta for such a short time they did not even have a jersey made up for him. He had only spent time with two other teams in all the years prior.
Anthony is not the first fallen star to overstay his welcome in a league, and he will certainly not be the last. In fact, there are a few in the NBA that are in a similar position.
A prime example is former slam dunk champion Vince Carter. At their peaks, Anthony and Carter dominated the game of basketball.
For Carter, most 20-somethings and older will remember him hammering balls through baskets in a Toronto Raptors or New Jersey Nets uniform, contorting his body through the air like most had never seen before.
For Anthony, NBA fans in the early and mid-2000s knew Anthony for his incredible scoring ability at really any spot on the court, whether it was during his time developing as a Denver Nugget or shining under the bright lights of Madison Square Garden as a New York Knick.
The two have now found themselves in positions most probably never thought would happen.
Carter has become a wanderer, becoming comfortable with being a 41-year-old bench filler. He's on his sixth team since being traded by the New Jersey Nets in the summer of 2009, the final place he received an All-Star nod, in the 2006-2007 season. For younger generations, that is what they know of the one dubbed “Vincanity." A has-been.
Anthony has now found himself down a similar path as Carter and many who came before them. His game no longer aligns with the way the NBA is played. Not to mention, his poor attitude has hurt him for much of his career.
For Anthony and Carter, they cannot give up their first love. Basketball raised them, gave them scholarships to prestigious universities, made them superstars and granted them with opportunities most can only dream of.
But it is also their first love that has ran out on them now. The first love for someone is always the most exciting, but it also tends to hurt the most when it is over. For Anthony, that pain is etching more and more real with each new team.
