Gold Medal Homecoming for Anthony

 (Sabina Moran/PressBox)

By: Keith Mills

Kurk Lee asked the kids to make some noise and they did. Lee, the former All-Metro basketball scoring machine at Dunbar and Calvert Hall and collegiate standout at Towson University, introduced Carmelo Anthony to hundreds of area elementary school kids and they welcomed the Towson Catholic graduate with open arms and loud screams.

"This is home," Carmelo told the kids from the Crossroads School and Inner Harbor East Academy. "I am glad to be here."

When Anthony returned from the Olympics with a gold medal, he stopped in Denver and Las Vegas, where Team USA trained before the Beijing games. But there was really only one place he wanted to be and that was exactly where he was last Friday -- on the basketball court of the Carmelo Anthony Youth Development Center on Fayette Street in East Baltimore.

Anthony donated $1.5 million to build the center three years ago and gives $300,000 annually to keep the facility open.

Two days later, he was standing at midfield at M&T Bank Stadium, high-fiving Ray Lewis and being honored by the Ravens before their season-opening win against the Cincinnati Bengals.

"I came a long way," said Anthony, who wore a No. 15 Ravens jersey and the gold medal around his neck. "It's a great deal to be at the Ravens' first game, their home opener. I never thought I would be doing the coin toss here. It's just an honor for me."

Anthony has now won an Olympic gold medal and an NCAA championship. If he wins an NBA title, he would be just the eighth player in U.S. history to pull off the rare triple. Clyde Lovellette, K.C. Jones, Bill Russell, Jerry Lucas, Quinn Buckner, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan are the only players to have won Olympic gold and NCAA and NBA championships.

Among the players who have won two are Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Oscar Robertson, Larry Bird and David Robinson. Bird, Jordan, Johnson and Robinson were teammates on the 1992 Olympic Dream Team. Bird won three NBA championships with the Celtics and Robinson two with the Spurs. Neither, however, won an NCAA title.

Anthony is still young, 24, and at the top of his game and delighted to be home, where his mother Mary Anthony joined hundreds of local youngsters and thousands of Ravens fans in honoring yet another Baltimore Olympic champion.

Issue 3.37: September 11, 2008