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“This is the moment when LeBron became the hero and I the villain”

MILLION DOLLAZ WORTH OF GAME guest Carmelo Anthony looked back on his NBA debut and the bad direction he quickly took, influenced by his bad relationships. He then had a discussion with David Stern.

“My mom was still living in the neighborhood when I was drafted. I said to her, ‘Mom, we are moving.’ She was like, ‘No I’m not going, I’m not going anywhere, this is the place I know, this is our neighborhood, we’ve been here forever, I’m not going.’ So every summer I would come back, I was in my neighborhood because that’s where I’m from, and I was showing my love to the neighborhood, and then with age I started to feel the survivor’s guilt: ‘I made it out, but I felt guilty that I made it and left you there. ‘ So I got everyone to come to the draft. I had 35 people with me in the draft, 15 of whom are now dead. So I had to deal with it and it had nothing to do with basketball. Then when I got to the NBA, I behaved like that, I didn’t care about basketball, I got there, it was fine with me, I shook hands with David Stern. I had the Nuggets jersey on, I was happy, I didn’t care what was going to happen after that. And my guys had the same mentality. I stayed in Baltimore during my first, my first two years in the NBA. People don’t know it, but David Stern must have called my agent and said, ‘get him out of here! What is he doing ? He makes’ Stop Snitching ‘videos (= stop snitching; Carmelo Anthony appeared in a video with gang members), you have to get him out of there!’ At that point I really had to take basketball seriously because there was all this going on and I was arrested for possession of weed, for driving under the influence, I was in this video ‘stop snitching ‘, I got confused with Larry Brown. This is when it became: the hero and the villain. Bron became the hero and I became the villain. But I became the villain who was liked, the streets loved me, I received love from all over the place, and I embraced it with open arms. Then I didn’t know how to be the hero, but I knew how to be the villain. It was the only thing I knew, until I got older after 4 or 5 years in the league and realized it was not the right path. Then the last incident was the fight at the Garden. I was suspended for 15 meetings by David Stern. I had the biggest suspension, the others were suspended like 6 games, 7 games, and I went to talk to him: ‘Why are you acting like that with me?’ He said to me ‘do you want to be in the streets or in the NBA?’ We were in his office: ‘do you want to be on the streets or in the NBA? You are in a business now. You will leave it all. I know who you are with, I know where you live, I know where they live, and I know where you sleep and where you wake up. I know what they are doing. Either you tell them to stop or you put them aside. ‘ He said to me: ‘I have to make an example of you. I know everything, I know your whole crew. I know who does what. ‘ I get it, if you give me $ 100 million, you have to know everything. I didn’t understand that at the time and it took me getting older and gaining wisdom to understand that it made sense. ” Melo

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