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Carmelo Anthony doesn’t deserve a farewell tour – Stephen A. | First Take

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Stephen A. Smith says love isn’t the issue — rings are.

Carmelo Anthony spent the summer of 2019 without a team, without a roster spot, and increasingly without a clear path back into the NBA after a disastrous 10-game stint with the Houston Rockets unraveled into a trade to Chicago and a February waiver. That limbo fueled a debate that spilled onto ESPN’s “First Take” on July 31, 2019, when Stephen A. Smith weighed in on whether the 35-year-old forward deserves the kind of ceremonial send-off recently given to retiring legends. Smith’s answer was blunt: no.

• Anthony played just 10 games with the Rockets in 2018-19 before being exiled, traded to the Bulls, and waived in February 2019, leaving him unsigned heading into the 2019 offseason.
• Across a 16-year career with the Nuggets, Knicks, Thunder, and Rockets, Anthony made 10 All-Star teams but never reached the NBA Finals and advanced past the conference semifinals only once, with Denver in 2009.
• Smith’s stated position: farewell tours should be reserved for title-winners and franchise pillars, not simply for accumulated stats or popularity.

The Case Against a Farewell Tour

Smith opened by drawing a clear line between admiration and ceremony. He made clear he holds “a lot of love” for Anthony, calling him a lock for the Hall of Fame and one of the most prolific scorers of his generation. But affection, Smith argued, isn’t the standard the league has historically used to justify parading a player through opposing arenas for gifts, tributes, and video montages on his way out.

That standard, in Smith’s framing, belongs almost exclusively to champions — the Kobe Bryants and Dwyane Wades of the sport, players whose banners hang in the rafters. Anthony, for all his individual brilliance, never got there. It’s a case built less on personal feeling and more on résumé math, the same kind of hard-nosed breakdown that dominates the format on First Take.

A Career Without a Ring

The numbers are the crux of the argument. Anthony’s 16 NBA seasons produced 10 All-Star selections, an Olympic gold medal, and a reputation as one of the purest scorers of his era — but zero championships and zero trips to the Finals. His deepest playoff run came in 2009, when the Denver Nuggets reached the Western Conference finals before losing to the Lakers.

10 All-Star nods. One conference finals appearance. Zero championships, zero Finals trips — in 16 seasons.

Smith used that gap to separate Anthony from the players who’ve gotten the full send-off treatment in recent years. It’s the same blunt, stats-first style that’s made First Take a lightning rod on live television, the kind of unfiltered take that plays out daily across sports debate shows and cable news alike.

Smith Defends Anthony’s Continued Merit

Smith didn’t argue Anthony should be run out of the league. Quite the opposite — he said Anthony has earned the right to sign somewhere and finish his career on an NBA court, on his own terms, rather than being forced into retirement by a lack of interest around the league. What he pushed back on was the idea that every team should treat Anthony’s final games as retirement stops, complete with ceremonial gifts, simply because he’s a recognizable name entering his final act.

That distinction — between earning a roster spot and earning a league-wide tribute — is where Smith planted his flag. It’s a distinction that echoes plenty of media dust-ups over the years about who gets celebrated and who gets scrutinized on live TV, and Anthony’s unsigned status in the summer of 2019 only sharpened the debate.

Anthony was still hunting for a training camp invite as July turned to August, with no team having offered so much as a guaranteed contract since his Chicago waiver in February. Whether he gets a farewell tour was never really the live question in NBA front offices that summer — the live question was whether anyone would give him a jersey at all.