Top 100 NBA Players: #66

Carmelo Anthony

(BBR: #53)

Carmelo Anthony has been a star in the NBA since day one, and with eight seasons under his belt, it's only right that he get some recognition as one of the best players in NBA history. He has scored at least 20 points per game in all eight seasons of his career, making him one of just 14 players to accomplish that in his career.

For the past six seasons, he hasn't just been reaching the 20-point plateau, he's been well above it, and he's ended each of those seasons ranked among the top 8 scorers in the league. He's also spent nearly his entire career as the best player on his team, only playing second fiddle during Iverson's full season in Denver and for the last half of this season to Amare, although that may change in the coming season.

Not only has Carmelo scored a lot in his career, he has taken his team to the playoffs in each and every season he has been in the league, although he has only seen his team pass through the first round once, in 2009, when he led the Nuggets to the Western Conference Finals.

Carmelo has missed at least five games in six of his eight seasons, for reasons ranging from deaths in the family to suspensions to minor injuries, but he has never spent more than 17 games in street clothes in a single season. His best season was not the one where he scored the most, but the one where he played the most games during his peak years, which came clear back in 2006. He bested that years scoring average twice since then, but both times did it while missing more than 10 games.

Carmelo also owns an NBA record that is quite impressive. In 2008, he scored 33 points in one quarter against Minnesota, tying George Gervin's record that had stood untouched for just over 30 years. That equates to nearly 3 points per minute during that quarter, and his total for the quarter was more than his season average for points per game.

Moncrief may have been a much better player than Anthony at his peak, but his peak lasted only six years, and Anthony has been a star player for all eight years of his career so far, and it's not even certain that he has reached his peak yet. The two are exactly even in playoff success, with each leading just one trip to the Conference Finals. I still get the feeling that Anthony can do more than he has so far, but maybe he's that rare player who found his peak early and was able to maintain it for a long time.