Carmelo Anthony put Denver Nuggets basketball back on the map. So why isn’t his jersey retired?

The longtime freeze of Carmelo Anthony in the Rocky Mountains with the Denver Nuggets is thawing as he is officially entering the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame this weekend.

Anthony will headline the Class of 2025 when he is officially enshrined Saturday in Springfield, Massachusetts. The 10-time NBA All-Star, six-time All-NBA selection and three-time Olympic gold medalist averaged 22.5 points per game over 19 seasons before retiring in 2022. Anthony is 10th all-time in NBA career scoring with 28,289 points. Anthony will also go into the Hoop Hall as a member of the 2008 USA Basketball Olympic gold medal team.

But Anthony’s most notable time in the NBA was averaging 24.8 points, 6.3 rebounds and 3.1 assists in 564 games for the Nuggets from 2003 to 2011 while playing in the postseason every season.

The Nuggets’ franchise and many of their fans, however, turned a cold shoulder to Anthony after he asked for a trade that led to him being dealt to the New York Knicks in 2011. To his chagrin, Anthony’s old No. 15 jersey is also worn by Nuggets superstar Nikola Jokic. But with Anthony entering the Basketball Hall of Fame, the Nuggets have several plans to finally celebrate him over the weekend.

“Carmelo meant so many things to so many people at all levels of the organization,” said Kroenke Sports and Entertainment vice-president Josh Kroenke in an Anthony tribute video made by the Nuggets for his Hall of Fame induction.

Time will tell if these moves by the Nuggets open the door to Anthony’s potential jersey retirement with the franchise. Even so, former Nuggets Chauncey Billups and Kiki Vandeweghe believe it’s time for the franchise to embrace Anthony and retire his No. 15 jersey.

“They should have retired Melo’s jersey the year after he retired,” Billups told Andscape. “Once he retired, I said, ‘All right, cool. He’s done now. He won’t play another game. It is time.’ And so, to me, it is already too late. That should have been the first order of business in terms of retiring Melo’s jersey just because I know exactly what he meant to the organization.”

Said Vandeweghe, the former Nuggets general manager who drafted Anthony in 2003, to Andscape: “I absolutely believe he should have his jersey retired in Denver. He is part of Nuggets history. And for a good period of time, he was the best player on the team, led a rebuild and represented the team in a great way. I’m a big Carmelo fan. I was when he was a player and I still am.”

Anthony’s divorce from Denver after his trade request was painful for the franchise and its fans. The Nuggets didn’t give Anthony a tribute video when he returned to play in Denver for the first time in a Knicks jersey or at any other time after that. Nuggets fans have also booed Anthony in Denver during his return visits.

Kroenke, however, has hinted at a possible olive branch with Anthony in recent years. The Nuggets are also showing a renewed love by having a presence to celebrate Anthony during Hall of Fame weekend.

The Nuggets ordered an ad in the Hoop Hall program honoring Anthony and plan to post social media graphics, highlight videos and even a voiceover celebrating his tenure in Denver. Altitude TV is also hoping that Anthony will sit down for an interview this weekend for an in-progress documentary that includes quotes from Kroenke.

Stan Kroenke officially bought the Nuggets on July 6, 2000, along with the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche and their arena (now called Ball Arena) for about $450 million. Josh Kroenke was 20 years old playing basketball for the University of Missouri at that time. The Kroenkes saw the Nuggets’ fortunes change after the arrival of Anthony in 2003.

“To our fan base, I think he represented a shift in where the organization was at a certain point in time to a different era of incredibly competitive basketball. We made the playoffs every year he was here, had some great runs in there, to the Western Conference finals one year. He put Nuggets basketball back on the map in an incredibly positive way,” Josh Kroenke said.

Before Anthony’s arrival to Denver, the Nuggets had a stretch as one of the least successful franchises in American professional sports. The Nuggets’ original heyday was in the late 1970s and the 1980s with the likes of Vandeweghe, Alex English, Dan Issel, Lafayette “Fat” Lever, Calvin Natt, T.R. Dunn and others making winning and playoff appearances the norm. The Nuggets went to the Western Conference finals in 1978 and 1985. But from 1991 to 2003, the Nuggets only made two playoff appearances, highlighted by upsetting the top-seeded Seattle SuperSonics in 1994.

The Nuggets and Cleveland Cavaliers won a league-worst 17 games during the 2002-03 season. After losing the LeBron James sweepstakes in the 2003 NBA Draft Lottery, the Nuggets were awarded the third overall pick. After James was selected by Cleveland first overall and Darko Milicic was picked second by Detroit, the Nuggets selected Anthony third out of Syracuse University.

Anthony remarkably led Syracuse to an NCAA men’s basketball national championship in 2003 as a freshman at 18 years old. And as a rookie with the Nuggets, the do-it-all small forward didn’t disappoint, averaging 21 points, 6.1 rebounds, 2.8 assists and 1.2 steals in 2003-04. Anthony finished second in voting for the 2004 NBA Rookie of the Year award to James despite the Nuggets making the playoffs for the first time since 1995, while Cleveland didn’t qualify.

“Every organization goes through those lean years where you’re rebuilding and you’re trying to do it again,” said Billups, a former Pistons star who was named to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2024. “All of those things were kind of happening for years before Melo got there. And unless you’re lucky like our Pistons were that year, you don’t get the third pick in the draft without being a horrible team or having a horrible season. So, you can imagine what the seasons looked like for them in prior years. They had good players, but there wasn’t a lot of positivity there. There was no belief in it.

“The perception completely changed when they got Melo. You got a guy that you can play through from Day 1. And he’s so hungry, so thirsty to become a star and show who he is. And every ounce of what he bought, they needed it.”

Said Vandeweghe: “Carmelo embraced the star role and came through as well as somebody could come through. I personally think he was as good as anybody. Carmelo was the leader of that team and he came to us when we were in the middle of a rebuild, and that’s hard enough. He meant a lot to the franchise.”

Anthony’s 13,970 points during eight seasons in Denver ranks fourth all-time in franchise history behind English, Issel and Jokic. Anthony led the Nuggets to the postseason during each of his eight seasons in Denver, including losing to Kobe Bryant and the eventual champion Los Angeles Lakers in the 2009 Western Conference finals (the Nuggets’ previous Western Conference finals appearance was in 1985). Anthony also made the Nuggets must-see television due to his popularity as a big-time scorer with swag. He made the franchise’s powder blue and white jerseys one of the league’s top sellers during his tenure.

Billups, now the Portland Trail Blazers’ head coach, says the city of Denver still has strong love for Anthony.

“Melo is one of the greatest players in the history of the franchise,” Billups said. “Obviously, there’s so many guys that came before us that were great players. And obviously, there was Joker [Jokic] that came after all of us. But Melo is one of the best players in the history of the franchise — probably top three, top two in the history of the franchise there. I’m still in Denver and all the fans and the people I know, they still appreciate him. They love him.

“Obviously, it broke their hearts for him to leave, especially at a time like that when we were close. So, it stung. But at the end of the day, they still love him. They appreciate that they got to see that Melo era.”

While no Anthony jersey retirement announcement was made by Kroenke or the Nuggets, the latter’s words and the franchise’s moves during Hall of Fame weekend seem like a potential step in that direction.

The last time the Nuggets retired a jersey was during the 2015-16 season with the late Dikembe Mutombo, who happened to be enshrined into the Hall of Fame in 2015. There is, however, a controversy with the Nuggets allowing Jokic to take the No. 15 after being drafted in the second round in 2014. Jokic has said he was aware that Anthony wore the No. 15 in Denver in stellar fashion, but he also had worn that number previously.

“It was a petty maneuver. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, we got numbers to choose from.’ It was like ‘Here, you got 15.’ And y’all put Jokic in the middle of that,” said Anthony on his podcast “7PM till Brooklyn.” He don’t know what the [expletive] is going on. He could’ve been like, ‘I want to wear 15. Fifteen is here. Oh, I can wear 15? Oh, that’s Melo’s number.’ Like pay homage. I don’t know.”

“He could’ve worn it because he wanted to pay homage. But what I believe is they gave him 15 to try to erase what I did. I used to think about it. I don’t think about that [expletive] no more though because what is meant to be is meant to be.”

On April 2, 2024, Jokic passed Anthony to become the Nuggets’ third all-time leading scorer. An argument could be made that Jokic is already the Nuggets’ greatest player ever with three NBA Most Valuable Player awards, seven All-Star appearances and the franchise’s lone title in 2023. Joker is the Nuggets’ all-time leader in rebounds, assists and triple-doubles, and is on pace to become their all-time leader in points, field goals made, steals and games played.

The expectation is Jokic will certainly get his No. 15 jersey retired in Denver after his playing days end. If Anthony and Jokic get the No. 15 retired in Denver, the Nuggets actually wouldn’t be the first to retire a number twice in American professional sports, as the New York Yankees, Portland Trail Blazers and Carolina Hurricanes have done so.

While Anthony’s time with the Knicks may also be worthy of a jersey retirement for his No. 7 there, his time with the Nuggets were the most substantial from a statistical and winning standpoint in his pro career.

Anthony previously expressed interest in having his jersey retired in Denver.

“I would like to see that jersey in both rafters, Denver and New York,” Anthony told NJ.com in April.