Carmelo Anthony: New NBA Thug?

After singing the praises of Carmelo Anthony for the past several weeks, fans and analysts must now begin to wonder if they were wrong about him. Is Carmelo Anthony just another young punk who can't contain himself or is this just a bump in the road?

After leading the league in scoring for the first quarter of the 2006-2007 season, Carmelo Anthony literally gave his image a black eye. On Saturday December 16, 2006, following a hard foul on teammate J.R. Smith by member the New York Knicks, Carmelo Anthony landed a sucker punch during an altercation. After landing the punch, Anthony immediately retreated to half court to escape any further physical response from the angry New York Knicks squad. Carmelo's actions were blatantly cowardous and uncalled for.

Carmelo Anthony was a member of the 2003 NBA draft class which featured Dwayne Wade and LeBron James. All three have been the new face of the league over the past two seasons. All three have been outstanding young men since joining the NBA and have only been the classy ball players that we would expect. LeBron James has single-handedly turned around the Cleveland Cavaliers and led them to the 2005-2006 season NBA playoffs. While Dwayne Wade led the Miami Heat to the 2005-2006 NBA Finals Championship. Carmelo Anthony has been an outstanding member of this class as well and was currently experiencing his best stretch of basketball since joining the league. Each of the three have even been featured in advertisements that showed them participating in community service activities. All seem to be the highest caliber basketball players no doubt and great people as well.

So why would Carmelo Anthony throw such a sucker punch and then scurry away? We may never know why he did what he did, but we can conjecture that he did it in the heat of the moment. Carmelo Anthony has always been a great proponent of the T-E-A-M concept so protecting his teammate during the scuffle was most likely a high priority. Also, by noting the fact that Anthony immediately ran away, we can guess that on some subconscious level he knew that what he did was wrong. Considering those two initial observations and thoughts, we should give Carmelo Anthony the benefit of the doubt and issue him a one-time pass. So just this once, we won't consider Carmelo Anthony a thug, but yet just a heated competitor and concerned teammate.