Former Syracuse basketball star Carmelo Anthony got disrespected

Perhaps the most popular figure from Syracuse basketball lore is Carmelo Anthony. So when he’s in the news, we talk about it.

With the NBA season rapidly approaching in mid-October, story-lines and anticipation is starting to build. With that, former Syracuse basketball prodigy, Carmelo Anthony, was back in the news this week.

The reason being, Melo believes that he got disrespected when analyzed among his peers in a recent poll. That recent poll comes by way of Slam Magazine. Which is an annual basketball magazine that has been in circulation for over 20 years.

Every season Slam ranks the top 50 players in the NBA today. Which is where Anthony comes into the picture. While the magazine still considers Melo a top-15 player in the league, that’s apparently not enough for Anthony.

“I just looked at it, and it was disrespectful,” said Anthony, who added that one of his family members sent the ranking to him as motivation. “I feel like I have something to prove, regardless of what’s going on. I’ve always felt like that. High school. College. NBA. I’ve always felt like I had to work extremely hard to get the respect I deserve.

“It is what it is. I take it with a grain of salt, I laugh at it, I definitely wasn’t upset about it yesterday. It was just kind of surprising. … So it’s just more of kind of letting them know, ‘You lost some credibility with me.'” (his comments come way of ESPN.com)

Last season he was ranked as the 13th best player and this season he fell to 15th on the magazine’s annual list. While Anthony was near his career low in points per game last season, he was stronger in a ton of other areas.

He had a career-high 4.2 assists per game and averaged 7.7 rebounds last season, his first full season following knee surgery in 2015. Although an underlying issue here could be the MVP debate.

While many people think that if you’re a good player on a bad team, you can never win the MVP award. Hence the New York Knicks only won 32 games last season and haven’t made the playoffs in three years. So often it seems that the reason he gets so little appreciation is due to his team’s struggles. Melo shared his thoughts on that dichotomy.

“If they want to put that on me, it is what it is. I can’t control that,” said Anthony, who was last named to an All-NBA team (voted on by the media) in 2012-13. “There’s so many things that come into play when it comes to team success, especially here in New York. So I can’t control that.”

What do you guys think? Does Melo have a case here? Should he be higher? Tell us what you think, share your comments below.