Melo was the reason I got into basketball as a kid. It was the first time I’d ever heard people get excited about our team.
Ninja_knows
No. Lol
BoneyardBill
Aggressive-Cut-227
Nah, fuck that.
TypicalGatsby
Sick of the pundits saying this is on us. Maybe, just maybe, if Melo came to a game in Denver, this would make sense. However I haven’t seen anything from him that doesn’t suggest he isn’t embarrassed of Denver and being a Nugget in his past. “Seen” is the key word. I don’t care what he tells Vic Lombardi during Summer League in Las Vegas.
gdirrty216
To quote Zach Bye, “I never tell a fan, how to fan”
Bottom line is, I have been a Nuggets fan since the days of Dikembe Mutombo, LaPhonso Ellis and Antonio McDyess. I could not have been more happy when they drafted Carmelo Anthony and could not have been more disappointed when he chose the life of a New Yorker to Denver.
Do I understand his position? Sure. Do I have to agree with it? Absolutely not. As a long term fan I can acknowledge that he put Denver on the map from a national perspective for basketball, but at the end of the day, he abandoned the team and abandoned the city.
To this day he still views himself more of the New York Knick than a Denver Nugget even though the vast majority of his success came here and not in New York Cit. If some fans want to move on and forgive him, I get that. You do you.
But to me, Carmelo is the ultimate sellout. And not only did he sell out, he sold out for fame and not for basketball success which makes it even worse. I will personally never cheer for him, and was quite frankly happy that he never had success after leaving Denver.
I would not support the team raising his jersey into the rafters. He could’ve chose to stay in Denver and retired and Nugget for life but chose a different path. And that’s OK.
It’s also OK for me to hold a grudge for 13 years and continue to hold a grudge for the next 20. I won’t tell another fan how they should fan, and I don’t believe anyone else should tell me how to fan.
LogenMNE
We don’t really have to. It’s not that Melo is trying to be part of the organization or that he ever felt bad because of his behaviour. So, I don’t really care
Ghosty15
Read the article, this just sounds like a propaganda piece from Melo apologists tbh. Melo was a big part of Nuggets history, but both parties should just casually give up. Neither side seems to want to reconnect properly, and both sides seem to eventually have gotten what they want. Melo got his wish to go to NYC, Nuggets finally got a ring.
Plenty of teams have had generational stars leave on bad terms (Magic- Dwight, Raptors – Vince, Pelicans – AD, OKC – KD, Butler – Twolves). And with all of these situations there seems to be a small vocal minority that wants to reconnect. Parroting (respectfully) the same stuff like “it’s time to move on” and “let them know we still care” lmao. But just like the Melo situation, nothing’s going to happen.
DogNamedLenny
No, and after reading the article here is my reasoning (as though it matters):
Melo wanted out, and as the article mentions, to him it was business. That’s fine, I’m not mad, but a legend to a city, or having a relationship with the people of that city, is more than business or performance on the court/field/ice. He decided what was best for his career, and that decision broke off his legend status in Denver. That’s the business decision he made whether he was fully knowledgeable of that or not.
The article mostly focuses on his importance to Nuggets history, as a lone bright spot in decades of poor play. However, that argument holds up when that lone bright spot is part of a turnaround, or remains the lone bright spot. Erik Johnson is well liked by Avs fans because he chose to stay through the bad years and became a leader to the core that brought us back to glory. Helton is a legend because he never left. Melo has played no part in guiding our current core like EJ did for the Avs, nor did he stay like Helton. Hell, Denver still loves Arenado even after he left because it appears that he truly tried to make it work.
In short, Melo reminds me of Tulowitzki. I liked him when he was here, understood why he left, but have no interest in honoring either of them as part of Denver’s sports history. I don’t hate either of them, but neither really left a lasting impact on Denver sports. Legends in sports transcend just the business side of it all, and Melo, by definition of his decisions, did not do that.
Last note: Tulo may not be the best comparison since injuries derailed his career, but it’s the best I could come up with.
LotharBot
This is mostly a reasonable article, but I don’t like the dismissiveness about fan negativity relating to Melo not showing up at any Nuggets games. We know he’s been publicly invited (by Michael Malone). We know other former and current Denver athletes, like Russell Wilson and Peyton Manning, show up at Nuggets games. For him to have not showed up a single time … that makes it seem like he doesn’t want a healed relationship. It’s a lot to put on fans who felt scorned that they have to make the first move.
The_Aught
Nah. Let new york love him for all the titles and success he had there. He shit on denver and he shit on our house music scene real bad. I’m 42, a 13 year grudge is nothing to me.
BubbieMcSnuggles
There is no issue with our current “relationship” with Carmelo. He is a former player who hasn’t played for us in 12 years – and we have outgrown his contributions to this franchise.
What do we all as fans love the most about the Denver Nuggets? Selflessness, playing team basketball the right way, representing our small-market “mountain town” with positivity, and never skipping steps. Not only on the court but in the way you conduct yourself as a member of this franchise off of it.
Carmelo, as good of an NBA player as he was, represented the opposite approach. Left us for a bigger market, wanted to be the guy, and never made being a part of this organization a priority. It is okay to leave things as they are. People romanticize the nostalgia of watching him when they were younger.
sassysixinches
ew dude no. hope his jersey never tarnishes the rafters. He had an opportunity to mend things with nuggs nation by just showing up to a single finals game, preferably in a Jokic jersey.
tron7
>Melo wasn’t the first to ever force his way out of the team that drafted him (cough … Kareem Abdul-Jabar in 1975 … cough)
Yeah, well, win a title for a city and you can pretty much do what you want.
RatLord445
Fuck off, i dont care about melo, i dont care about AI, i dont care about iggy
We have a great thing right now so lets not ruin it by bringing up this motherfucker
GHamPlayz
Who?
broncosfighton
Nah
OptionalBagel
Idgaf anymore and I think they should probably retire Jokic’s jersey in the current brand and Melo’s jersey in the powder blues.
BUT: It seems like Jeff’s argument is: It’s been 13 years, and Melo made basketball fun again in Denver, so it’s past time to forgive him even if he won’t make the first grand gesture (of coming to a game).
I don’t think that’s a convincing argument. IMO Melo made the first move demanding a trade, so I’m not going to fault anyone who won’t forgive him unless he makes the first move of repairing this relationship.
JakeJacob
Contrition is big with me so, no. If he doesn’t care, I sure as fuck ain’t gonna.
I don’t necessarily think Jeff is *wrong*, though.
ThaBrofessor
samgo39
Does it even matter? We’re in our golden era now. Jokic era. The Melo era was a long time ago and we and the organization don’t owe him anything.
mahaalo0
Nope! Maybe the Knicks will hang up his 7 for him.
SPRTMVRNN
If there’s one thing about the article I disagree with, it’s the first two words of the headline. “It’s time…” I think that time will come, but it’s not here yet.
Things like this happen at their own pace. You aren’t going to be able to finger wag Nuggets fans into being open to welcoming Melo back into the Nuggets inner circle. The responses in this thread indicate that time has not yet come. Maybe articles like this are part of moving towards it, but it has to happen naturally.
Advocates for Melo seem to want to push for it to happen as soon as possible. Look no further than the calls to retire Melo’s jersey. Every time someone does this, they totally avoid the Jokic of it all. If pressed, most of them will say Melo’s jersey should he retired with Jokic’s. Well, the time to retire Jokic’s jersey isn’t any time soon, so why call for Melo’s jersey to be retired now? It’s all part of this agenda to make this reconciliation happen before it happens naturally.
Why isn’t it time yet? Sure, it was 13 years ago, which is a long time. But The Melodrama was not an isolated incident. It was part of an era of NBA basketball. The advocates like to call it the “player empowerment” era. But that is not an accurate name for it. It was the “superstar empowerment” era. There were maybe a dozen players tops who benefit from it. Some fans of marquee big market teams may benefit from it, but it was neutral or bad for everyone else. And that includes Nuggets fans.
The Melo era of Nuggets history makes this era feel more special, mostly in all the ways that it is different. Obviously, there is a difference in the on court and playoff success, but there are also cultural differences. One of the most endearing things about Jokic is he isn’t interested in any of the things that were important to the players of the superstar/super team era. He casually rejects it. It’s one of the reasons it’s never been a question that he would stay here in Denver, as it was with Melo. Melo not wanting to stay with this franchise, informs why Jokic is such a perfect superstar for the Nuggets. Jokic rejects all the things that made Melo reject the Nuggets. That friction still exists today.
Melo is not the face of the superstar empowerment/super team era. The face of it is Melo’s good buddy LeBron James. The super team era may be on its last legs, but it won’t be done until LeBron is done. LeBron’s influence over NBA media and casual NBA fans still looms large. And it still fights to invalidate and disrespect the Nuggets success. The Denver Nuggets being the top team in the league is incompatible with the view of the NBA that LeBron James and his simps in the media and fanbase have cultivated his entire career. Even if it’s in the process of being run over by the era of ethical basketball the Nuggets represent, it’s not gone yet.
I think when the door is finally slammed shut on that era, when LeBron is retired and trying to prove he can be a better franchise owner than MJ or whatever other part of his legacy or narrative he wants to obsess over, the time for this healing will arrive. Like it or not Melo still represents that era, and the era isn’t done yet, so the friction isn’t done. And so, the time has not yet come. But it will come eventually.
25 Comments
Melo was the reason I got into basketball as a kid. It was the first time I’d ever heard people get excited about our team.
No. Lol
Nah, fuck that.
Sick of the pundits saying this is on us. Maybe, just maybe, if Melo came to a game in Denver, this would make sense. However I haven’t seen anything from him that doesn’t suggest he isn’t embarrassed of Denver and being a Nugget in his past. “Seen” is the key word. I don’t care what he tells Vic Lombardi during Summer League in Las Vegas.
To quote Zach Bye, “I never tell a fan, how to fan”
Bottom line is, I have been a Nuggets fan since the days of Dikembe Mutombo, LaPhonso Ellis and Antonio McDyess. I could not have been more happy when they drafted Carmelo Anthony and could not have been more disappointed when he chose the life of a New Yorker to Denver.
Do I understand his position? Sure. Do I have to agree with it? Absolutely not. As a long term fan I can acknowledge that he put Denver on the map from a national perspective for basketball, but at the end of the day, he abandoned the team and abandoned the city.
To this day he still views himself more of the New York Knick than a Denver Nugget even though the vast majority of his success came here and not in New York Cit. If some fans want to move on and forgive him, I get that. You do you.
But to me, Carmelo is the ultimate sellout. And not only did he sell out, he sold out for fame and not for basketball success which makes it even worse. I will personally never cheer for him, and was quite frankly happy that he never had success after leaving Denver.
I would not support the team raising his jersey into the rafters. He could’ve chose to stay in Denver and retired and Nugget for life but chose a different path. And that’s OK.
It’s also OK for me to hold a grudge for 13 years and continue to hold a grudge for the next 20. I won’t tell another fan how they should fan, and I don’t believe anyone else should tell me how to fan.
We don’t really have to. It’s not that Melo is trying to be part of the organization or that he ever felt bad because of his behaviour. So, I don’t really care
Read the article, this just sounds like a propaganda piece from Melo apologists tbh. Melo was a big part of Nuggets history, but both parties should just casually give up. Neither side seems to want to reconnect properly, and both sides seem to eventually have gotten what they want. Melo got his wish to go to NYC, Nuggets finally got a ring.
Plenty of teams have had generational stars leave on bad terms (Magic- Dwight, Raptors – Vince, Pelicans – AD, OKC – KD, Butler – Twolves). And with all of these situations there seems to be a small vocal minority that wants to reconnect. Parroting (respectfully) the same stuff like “it’s time to move on” and “let them know we still care” lmao. But just like the Melo situation, nothing’s going to happen.
No, and after reading the article here is my reasoning (as though it matters):
Melo wanted out, and as the article mentions, to him it was business. That’s fine, I’m not mad, but a legend to a city, or having a relationship with the people of that city, is more than business or performance on the court/field/ice. He decided what was best for his career, and that decision broke off his legend status in Denver. That’s the business decision he made whether he was fully knowledgeable of that or not.
The article mostly focuses on his importance to Nuggets history, as a lone bright spot in decades of poor play. However, that argument holds up when that lone bright spot is part of a turnaround, or remains the lone bright spot. Erik Johnson is well liked by Avs fans because he chose to stay through the bad years and became a leader to the core that brought us back to glory. Helton is a legend because he never left. Melo has played no part in guiding our current core like EJ did for the Avs, nor did he stay like Helton. Hell, Denver still loves Arenado even after he left because it appears that he truly tried to make it work.
In short, Melo reminds me of Tulowitzki. I liked him when he was here, understood why he left, but have no interest in honoring either of them as part of Denver’s sports history. I don’t hate either of them, but neither really left a lasting impact on Denver sports. Legends in sports transcend just the business side of it all, and Melo, by definition of his decisions, did not do that.
Last note: Tulo may not be the best comparison since injuries derailed his career, but it’s the best I could come up with.
This is mostly a reasonable article, but I don’t like the dismissiveness about fan negativity relating to Melo not showing up at any Nuggets games. We know he’s been publicly invited (by Michael Malone). We know other former and current Denver athletes, like Russell Wilson and Peyton Manning, show up at Nuggets games. For him to have not showed up a single time … that makes it seem like he doesn’t want a healed relationship. It’s a lot to put on fans who felt scorned that they have to make the first move.
Nah. Let new york love him for all the titles and success he had there. He shit on denver and he shit on our house music scene real bad. I’m 42, a 13 year grudge is nothing to me.
There is no issue with our current “relationship” with Carmelo. He is a former player who hasn’t played for us in 12 years – and we have outgrown his contributions to this franchise.
What do we all as fans love the most about the Denver Nuggets? Selflessness, playing team basketball the right way, representing our small-market “mountain town” with positivity, and never skipping steps. Not only on the court but in the way you conduct yourself as a member of this franchise off of it.
Carmelo, as good of an NBA player as he was, represented the opposite approach. Left us for a bigger market, wanted to be the guy, and never made being a part of this organization a priority. It is okay to leave things as they are. People romanticize the nostalgia of watching him when they were younger.
ew dude no. hope his jersey never tarnishes the rafters. He had an opportunity to mend things with nuggs nation by just showing up to a single finals game, preferably in a Jokic jersey.
>Melo wasn’t the first to ever force his way out of the team that drafted him (cough … Kareem Abdul-Jabar in 1975 … cough)
Yeah, well, win a title for a city and you can pretty much do what you want.
Fuck off, i dont care about melo, i dont care about AI, i dont care about iggy
We have a great thing right now so lets not ruin it by bringing up this motherfucker
Who?
Nah
Idgaf anymore and I think they should probably retire Jokic’s jersey in the current brand and Melo’s jersey in the powder blues.
BUT: It seems like Jeff’s argument is: It’s been 13 years, and Melo made basketball fun again in Denver, so it’s past time to forgive him even if he won’t make the first grand gesture (of coming to a game).
I don’t think that’s a convincing argument. IMO Melo made the first move demanding a trade, so I’m not going to fault anyone who won’t forgive him unless he makes the first move of repairing this relationship.
Contrition is big with me so, no. If he doesn’t care, I sure as fuck ain’t gonna.
I don’t necessarily think Jeff is *wrong*, though.
Does it even matter? We’re in our golden era now. Jokic era. The Melo era was a long time ago and we and the organization don’t owe him anything.
Nope! Maybe the Knicks will hang up his 7 for him.
If there’s one thing about the article I disagree with, it’s the first two words of the headline. “It’s time…” I think that time will come, but it’s not here yet.
Things like this happen at their own pace. You aren’t going to be able to finger wag Nuggets fans into being open to welcoming Melo back into the Nuggets inner circle. The responses in this thread indicate that time has not yet come. Maybe articles like this are part of moving towards it, but it has to happen naturally.
Advocates for Melo seem to want to push for it to happen as soon as possible. Look no further than the calls to retire Melo’s jersey. Every time someone does this, they totally avoid the Jokic of it all. If pressed, most of them will say Melo’s jersey should he retired with Jokic’s. Well, the time to retire Jokic’s jersey isn’t any time soon, so why call for Melo’s jersey to be retired now? It’s all part of this agenda to make this reconciliation happen before it happens naturally.
Why isn’t it time yet? Sure, it was 13 years ago, which is a long time. But The Melodrama was not an isolated incident. It was part of an era of NBA basketball. The advocates like to call it the “player empowerment” era. But that is not an accurate name for it. It was the “superstar empowerment” era. There were maybe a dozen players tops who benefit from it. Some fans of marquee big market teams may benefit from it, but it was neutral or bad for everyone else. And that includes Nuggets fans.
The Melo era of Nuggets history makes this era feel more special, mostly in all the ways that it is different. Obviously, there is a difference in the on court and playoff success, but there are also cultural differences. One of the most endearing things about Jokic is he isn’t interested in any of the things that were important to the players of the superstar/super team era. He casually rejects it. It’s one of the reasons it’s never been a question that he would stay here in Denver, as it was with Melo. Melo not wanting to stay with this franchise, informs why Jokic is such a perfect superstar for the Nuggets. Jokic rejects all the things that made Melo reject the Nuggets. That friction still exists today.
Melo is not the face of the superstar empowerment/super team era. The face of it is Melo’s good buddy LeBron James. The super team era may be on its last legs, but it won’t be done until LeBron is done. LeBron’s influence over NBA media and casual NBA fans still looms large. And it still fights to invalidate and disrespect the Nuggets success. The Denver Nuggets being the top team in the league is incompatible with the view of the NBA that LeBron James and his simps in the media and fanbase have cultivated his entire career. Even if it’s in the process of being run over by the era of ethical basketball the Nuggets represent, it’s not gone yet.
I think when the door is finally slammed shut on that era, when LeBron is retired and trying to prove he can be a better franchise owner than MJ or whatever other part of his legacy or narrative he wants to obsess over, the time for this healing will arrive. Like it or not Melo still represents that era, and the era isn’t done yet, so the friction isn’t done. And so, the time has not yet come. But it will come eventually.