For a minute there, it seemed like future Hall of Famer and 10-time NBA All-Star Carmelo Anthony was getting the Colin Kaepernick treatment from NBA teams for no reason other than being a “ball stopper” on offense.

Luckily for fans of the game, the Portland Trailblazers decided to take a chance on the iso-ball scorer extraordinaire and it’s paying off big time as the recently unemployed NBA star done went “Hoodie-Melo” on the league and is posting up impressive numbers across the board.

So much so that Oregon Live wrote a piece on Carmelo praising him for not only breathing new life into the Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum-lead team but for bringing back the “fun” to Portland basketball that’s been missing for a minute even with that deadly backcourt.

Though Melo’s only played in five games thus far for the Trailblazers, he’s already put up a 25-point performance against the Bulls and more recently a 19-point effort against OKC in which he shot an efficient nine for 11 and moved onto 18th place on the All-Time NBA scoring list. Obviously, Melo is far from washed as most believed at the beginning of the season.

“I think people just see how kind of genuine this is for me,” Anthony said. “This is not nothing fake. This is authentic. This is who I am. This is genuine. This is real love at the end of the day. And I think people can sense when it’s not. I think that’s what we’re dealing with here.”

His All-Star teammate Lillard is also delighting in the rejuvenated Anthony and is happy to be witnessing it firsthand.

“It’s fun to see,” Lillard said of the “Me-lo” chants. “We’ve got another megastar, a Hall of Famer … and the fans are excited about it, as they should be. I think it’s a point in his career where he needs that type of support. He needs people behind him and to feel good about what he’s doing. So it was great to witness. We all want to be a part of his comeback. We want to see it work out. We want to see him get the respect that he’s due. So to see how the crowd responded to him, it’s really good to see and be a part of.

“And it’s also … a spark and some energy that our team needed. It’s fun to see.”

Hopefully Melo can keep this up for the remainder of the season and well into the playoffs because while many thought this was going to be Anthony’s “farewell tour” throughout the season, it’s looking like Melo’s making a case that he can continue to contribute to a contending team for at least another season.

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Photo: Getty

Source: HipHopWired.com

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