Melo on activism: “We have to adapt to change”
There was a time in Carmelo Anthony’s nearly two-decade NBA career when his maturity was called into question.
As recently as last summer, there was even uncertainty about whether Anthony, the aging 10time All-Star, was employable as a professional basketball player and could accept being a part of a supporting cast.
But in November, Anthony signed with the Portland Trail Blazers, embraced a reduced role and began having his best season in years.
Now, his story is one of redemption.
At 36, he is considered a valued elder statesman who is destined for the Basketball Hall of Fame. After spending much of his NBA tenure fending off questions about his commitment to winning, Anthony showed up noticeably slimmer last month for the league’s restart at Walt Disney World, and he has hit key baskets that have helped Portland remain in the hunt for the playoffs.
“I feel like we could have been in the finals last year if we had him,” Damian Lillard, Portland’s franchise star, told reporters recently, referring to Anthony.
Maybe this is the year. But even if it’s not, Anthony’s strong play has helped him maintain a platform for an endeavor for which he says he will never accept a reduced role: speaking out about social justice.
“Everything is shifting,” Anthony said in a phone interview. “We have to adapt to the change.”
His latest foray into activism comes in a partnership with Chris Paul, the All-Star Oklahoma City Thunder guard, and Dwyane Wade, the retired NBA star.
The three helped create the Social Change Fund, a philanthropic effort to invest in organizations that support people of color, both from a policy perspective — such as advancing causes like criminal justice reform and expanded voting rights — and at a community level by targeting racial inequities in housing and education.
Anthony said the group came together because of the conversations about racism after George Floyd, a Black man, died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes in May, setting off nationwide protests.
Several NBA players participated. Anthony said he hoped this fund would be able to address inequality on the front end, short-circuiting the familiar conversations after the fact.
“Before, we would say things and we would follow through, then it would just die out until something else happened,” Anthony said. “And then something else happened. We keep being reactive as opposed to being proactive.”
He added, “We realize that we’re still in the same situation that we’ve been in for a very long time.”
Anthony, Paul and Wade contributed the initial funds for the project with the hope that their names could draw more investments. Goldman Sachs and Creative Artists Agency have signed on as seed funders, according to a news release.
“We all have our different lanes,” Anthony said. “Whether I’m on criminal justice reform, or I want to be on educational reform, we all have these different lanes. So we just want to build this whole actual fund so we could then attack those lanes.”
Anthony has been one of the more outspoken players in the NBA for several years. Last month, he guest-edited Slam, a basketball magazine, and appeared on the cover with his 13year-old son, Kiyan, both in black hoodies. In a column, Anthony wrote, “Will you ever take your knee off our necks? Is it because I’m Black? Does that scare you?”
In 2016, Anthony, Wade, Paul and LeBron James took the stage at the ESPYs and began the show with a monologue decrying racism and police brutality. The year before, Anthony marched in Baltimore, where he grew up, to protest the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man who died in police custody.
Early in Anthony’s NBA career, he was criticized for appearing briefly in an anti-snitching DVD that was filmed in Baltimore and threatened potential witnesses to crimes. Soon after the video emerged, Anthony disavowed its content.
Now, Anthony is speaking out about police reform. He said he grew up in a community where everyone knew each other and some police officers had a strong relationship with the neighborhood. But others were unfamiliar, and that caused issues.
“I’ve dealt with it all. Have I ever experienced police brutality before? Yes,” Anthony said, adding: “Whether it was being pulled over, being racially profiled, or being in my neighborhood and being on my block and the police jumping out of their cars and snatching you up and throwing you on the sidewalk and make you sit there — I’ve experienced that.”