Carmelo Anthony wasn’t too pleased to learn that his former team, the Denver Nuggets, had given another new player his old jersey number, No. 15. Even if that player turned out to be fellow NBA MVP Nikola Jokic.
“It was a small maneuver,” Anthony, 39, told Kid Mero’s 7 pm in Brooklyn podcast this week. “We couldn’t choose between numbers, it was like having number 15 here.”
Anthony said he thinks it’s possible Jokic, 28, could have chosen No. 15 to “honor” him as one of the Nuggets’ all-time greats.
“But I believe they gave him No. 15 to try and erase what I did,” he said.
NBA star Carmelo Anthony announced his retirement: ‘My story has always been about more than basketball’
Carmelo Anthony.
Ned Dishman/NBAE via Getty
Anthony retired from the NBA last May after 19 seasons. He was first drafted by Denver with the 3rd overall pick in the 2003 NBA Draft, after winning the NCAA National Championship with the Syracuse Orange earlier that year.
The star forward excelled in the NBA, becoming one of the Nuggets’ greatest players of all time, finishing his tenure with the franchise as its third all-time leading scorer and leading the team to the Western Conference Finals in 2009. But Anthony requested a trade in 2011, eventually moving to the New York Knicks after an acrimonious end to his time in Denver. Anthony’s career in New York never produced the coveted NBA title he hoped to bring to the city, leading the team to three playoff appearances but only one series win during that time.
La La Anthony on Son Kiyan’s Growing Popularity on Social Media: ‘He Has Almost a Million Followers!’ (Exclusive)
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(922x175:924x177)/nikola-jovic-nuggets-011224-7bb35c82e9d84454b9abc86325fa9479.jpg)
Nikola Jokic.
Ethan Mito/Clarkson Creative/Getty
Anthony never won an NBA title, but he won a record four gold medals with the US Olympic men’s basketball team. He finished his career as the 19th all-time NBA scorer with 28,289 points.
“I am forever grateful to those people and places because they made Carmelo Anthony out of me,” the former NBA star said last year in a video announcing his retirement from basketball. “But now the time has come to say goodbye to the field where I made my name in a game that gave me purpose and pride.”
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
The Nuggets drafted Jokic in 2014, roughly a decade before the Serbian-born power forward led the team to its first NBA title last season.
Jokic – one of the league’s most popular players – was named NBA Finals MVP, one season after winning back-to-back league MVP awards in 2021 and 2022.
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education