By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
After four Olympic games, Carmelo Anthony decided to call it a day. The US forward won four medals, a bronze in 2004 and three golds in 2008, 2012 and 2016, the first basketball player ever to win three Olympic basketball tournaments.
“This is it for me”, he said in tears after the end of the game, “I know this is the end”. The star of the New York Knicks is the all time leading scorer of USA men’s basketball team and has the US record for most points in a single Olympic contest with 37 against Nigeria in 2012.
Speaking on live television he added: “We fought. It wasn’t always pretty. We came together July 17, and we all committed for this reason. It was a special moment for me. I committed to something. I committed to this in ’04.
I’ve seen the worst and I’ve seen the best. I stuck with it, we stuck with it. I’m here today, three gold medals later. I’m excited for me, but also for the other guys who have never experienced anything like this. Coach K, myself, Jerry Colangelo and everybody else who have been a part of this since I’ve been here. I just want to say thank you for allowing me to be one of the leaders, not just of our team but of the country.
Despite everything that’s going on right now in our country, we got to be united. I’m glad I did what I did, I stepped up the challenge but this is what it’s about. Representing our country on the biggest stage you can be on. America will be great again, I believe that. We got a lot of work to do but one step at a time. I’m glad we represented it in the fashion that we did”.
According to USA Basketball managing director Jerry Colangelo his commitment to the national team is very easy to prove by one simple fact: “The fact that he came back this time, he was a question mark earlier. I think he’s happy he came back for a lot of reasons. It gave us an opportunity to say ‘thank you’ to Melo for the job he’s done and the commitment to USA Basketball and I couldn’t be happier for him also”.