The words fit him so well it’s scary. He’s the center of attention. Fans and teammates imitate his every runner in the lane. Managers, P.R. hounds and overseers tend to his every need.

“Sometimes I sit back and I think, How do these people listen to me? I’m only 20 years old,” he says. “I’m 20, talking about being a businessman! It’s hard for me because there are people twice my age that I got working for me right now. And at the same time I’m trying to learn what to do.”

But what Melo lacks in overcooked confidence he makes up for in laid–back cool. Despite several hours of body styling, trouser tweaking and photo snapping on his day off, he remains unfazed, taking solace in brief breaks to answer the buzzing of his busy Sidekick. No business calls today, though.

“I’m only taking calls from two people: Mama and La La,” he informs his entourage. “Everybody else can wait.”

Mama is Mary Anthony, the woman who raised her boy in the grimy neighborhood of B–More where Melo’s favorite show, HBO’s The Wire,—“It don’t get no deeper or more truthful than that,” he says—is set. La La, for those who don’t scan Page Six every morning, is La La Vasquez, 23, the almond–eyed MTV Veejay and Melo’s sexy fiancée. After a year–and–a–half courtship that started in a New York club, they were engaged on Christmas morning of last year. No date has been set. Anthony brings the cheddar home in the form of his $4 million Nuggets salary and a reported $18 million deal with Nike, but he often defers to his lady—“She’s been in this game for a minute, so she could pretty much guide me”—and a small team of accountants. “I ain’t too big with trust,” he says matter–of–factly. “But you gotta trust somebody. I always manage my money, find out where it’s going, where it’s coming from.”

Most guys who are just losing their baby fat don’t have such concerns, but then most young men aren’t next in a line of sports superstars turned entrepreneurial giants. Yet Anthony’s not quite out of the mold of his Nike forebear, Michael Jordan, or wheeler–dealer Magic Johnson. Unlike them, the third pick in the 2003 NBA draft is getting his Andrew Carnegie on at the start of his career. MJ sold Hanes and Mickey D’s and Magic bought movie theaters and Starbucks franchises late in their basketball run. Anthony, though, has been delivering a different marketing point of view from day one.

“When brand Jordan and I first met, they felt I was being looked up to from the people in the street and in the corporate world,” he says with a smirk. “Since I basically am becoming a mogul, they wanted me to relate to the younger people.”