One of the biggest “What-ifs” in NBA history is the 2003 draft. In a loaded class, the draft saw Darko Milicic being drafted second overall after LeBron James went to Cleveland. Milicic became known as one of the biggest draft busts of all time while the player that went after him, Carmelo Anthony, became both revered and criticized.
Anthony has carved out a nice career and he will almost certainly be a hall of famer. But he has had limited team success in Denver and now in New York. The what-if scenario comes as a result of that lack of winning. How would Melo’s career shape out if he had been drafted by the Pistons, a team that won the NBA championship that same season.
According to Chauncey Billups, a former teammate and close friend of Anthony’s, the small forward would have been known as an “absolute icon.” In a fantastic piece written by Bleacher Reports’ Howard Beck about the friendship between LeBron and Carmelo, Billups speaks at length about Melo and how the perception of his play and his career would have changed had he been drafted to a championship Pistons team:
“Those are the questions that I ask and try to envision,” said Billups, who spent parts of three seasons with Anthony, in Denver and New York, and remains a close friend.
“That ball-stopping mentality that Carmelo has? He wouldn’t have had that if he was a Piston,” Billups said. “We wouldn’t let him play like that. He would have been a much better player than he is now—and he’s a great player now.
“This guy would have been,” Billups said, pausing to chuckle for a moment, “he would have been an absolute icon, because winning takes you there.”
The gears keep turning in Billups’ head, and the alternate endings keep unfurling.
“Who even knows if LeBron would have ever gotten through us?” he said. “We probably would have had three championships…What would LeBron have been at this point? Great player, but at what point would he have been able to get through the Pistons, if Carmelo had the supporting cast of us, of this team?”
This is certainly an interesting thought. Melo has always been a fluid scorer and he would have added the one thing that those Pistons teams did not have. In all likelihood, he would have at least one ring, laying to bed the criticism that he is not a “winner.”
But of course, this is all speculative. Perhaps the fit wouldn’t work and who knows if the team would continue to work so well together as Billups envisions. As it stands now, Carmelo Anthony has a hall-of-fame worthy career – nothing to sneeze at – but when viewing his legacy, one may always ask “what if?”
