He gave you everything.

Forget about heart and hustle. Carmelo Anthony gave you a boastful smile and a cocksure laugh. He gave you chest bumps and trash talk. He gave you 30-5, the Final Four and the national championship.

He gave you a name to hang your school pride on. And Sunday night, you’ll give a little something back.

More than 20,000 Syracuse fans will show up for an NBA exhibition game they care nothing about Sunday at 6 p.m., when Anthony’s Denver Nuggets take on the Detroit Pistons at the Carrier Dome.

The game means nothing. Neither team has any sort of fan base in Syracuse. The Nuggets have long been woeful. The Pistons bore with a defensive strategy.

But you’ll go to see Anthony. You’ll go because it’s a last chance at nostalgia before you have to move on.

‘I’m amazed this many people are so excited to come watch me play for a different team,’ Anthony said during a visit to Syracuse last month. ‘I can’t wait to sit at that old locker. I can’t wait to play in the Dome. It’ll be just like the old days.’

Not quite. Chances are it will feel more like a high school reunion: Just when Anthony and the fans feel comfortable with each other again, it will be time to part.

Other things are different, too. It was just a year ago, after all, that Carmelo Anthony – a talented-but-unproven freshman – slipped into his orange Syracuse threads and posed for the press for the first time.

He grew comfortable in that jersey. He averaged 22 points and 10 rebounds for the Orangemen. He bookended his season with masterful performances – a 27-point, 11-rebound game in the season-opener against Memphis and a 20-point, 10-rebound, 7-assist stat stuffer against Kansas in the national championship.

He became a First-Team All-American and the Most Valuable Player of the Final Four – earning him the cover of Sports Illustrated twice. He played so well, in fact, that he had little choice but declare for the NBA Draft last June, when the Nuggets made him the No. 3 pick.

At Syracuse, Anthony was just as comfortable away from the court. He arrived worried that he might never fit in. But, after just a few days at school, he found a close group of friends amongst his teammates. He lived with SU guard Billy Edelin. But on more than one occasion, Hakim Warrick and Josh Pace found Anthony sleeping on their couch.

‘I feel good here,’ Anthony said a few months into the season. ‘It’s tough to imagine any other place that’s going to feel this much like home.’

Denver certainly isn’t there yet.

The Rocky Mountain News, one of Denver’s primary newspapers, recently followed Anthony around for a day. The highlights? A lonely lunch for one at the ESPN Zone and a three-hour photo shoot in the mountains. So far, Anthony hasn’t found a home amongst his teammates, as he did at Syracuse. He’s closest with forward Rodney White, but doesn’t hang out with him all that often.

In Denver, Anthony has a high-rise apartment, a lucrative shoe deal and a new dog. Does he have a place that feels like home?

‘Not quite yet,’ Anthony said. ‘I think it’s getting better, but it’s lonely sometimes.’

That’s why Sunday night will be bittersweet for Anthony, too. For 48 minutes of basketball, he’ll revel in the spotlight. But when the clock runs out, his Syracuse reunion ends.

When Anthony leaves, you’ll move on to a new season. You’ll move on to Edelin and Warrick and Pace and Gerry McNamara. You’ll start talking about Syracuse’s team this year instead of last.

Anthony will move on to a promising 82-game season, one in which Denver expects him to become a star. He’ll move on to business deals and bling-bling jewelry and a brand new car.

And smaller crowds.

‘In a lot of ways, I don’t want it to end (Sunday night),’ Anthony said. ‘I’ll probably be tempted to walk into the locker room at halftime and just stay there. I won’t want to ever come out.’

Published on October 16, 2003 at 12:00 pm