Cynics could look at basketball's place in the Summer Olympics as a brazen attempt to shoehorn some of the world's most recognisable, marketable athletes into an event sometimes devoid of stars. Since Michael Jordan's 1992 "Dream Team", NBA players have lined up every four years to collect near-automatic gold medals for the United States, thus skewing somewhat the medal count in favour of the Americans.
It’s tough to disagree, if the argument is merely about the merits of basketball as Olympic competition. The US have won five of the six available golds since professionals were allowed to play starting in 1992. It’s a sport the country popularised and will continue dominating.
Competitive balance aside, the Olympics hold an important place in the overall basketball landscape. Even if you only look at it from an American point of view, the games give NBA players and fans something to look forward to outside of the dogged, monolithic pursuit of an NBA championship. An Olympic gold medal is something only 12 players every four years can claim, and fans of the league’s many (many) have-nots can unite with those who are used to rooting for the league’s elite.
No player has benefited more from this than Carmelo Anthony.
Consider how international football gives clubs and countries countless opportunities to win silverware. A Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi could win several tournaments a year. Meanwhile, LeBron James has only three NBA championships in his 13-year career. Anthony has zero in as many seasons, and is in no position to win one any time soon. Hardware is hard to come by in American team sports.
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Anthony is on track to win a record third Olympic gold. On the national team, Anthony is consistently the team’s leading scorer and often outclasses contemporaries such as James and Dwyane Wade. The latter two are revered among NBA purists for their combined six NBA titles, while Anthony is often an afterthought.
Because of the Olympics, though, Anthony has an opportunity to carve out his legacy outside of the exclusive prism of NBA titles. He could go down as not only the greatest US Olympic basketball player ever, but as one of the country’s great Olympians.
Many would dismiss the distinction, as Americans typically reserve such plaudits for the once-every-four-year heroes such as Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Mark Spitz or Carl Lewis – the ones who show up on cereal boxes for a few months only to disappear out of national consciousness when NFL season starts.
Anthony plays 82 NBA games a year and is married to a celebrity. He’s rarely out of the spotlight. He will be remembered as a great NBA player and one of the best one-and-done college players ever (his 2003 title-winning season at Syracuse was among the greats). It’s increasingly unlikely his legacy will include an NBA title, but that shouldn’t discount his mark on the game.
American sport fans tend to punish the title-less for not being Jordan or James.: Yeah, Charles Barkley was great, but he never won a title. Sure, Dan Marino was phenomenal, but he never won a title.
A third Olympic gold would put Anthony in a pantheon apart from his peers, whether or not he ever wins NBA gold.
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