Less than three weeks after he signed a one-year non-guaranteed deal with the Trail Blazers, and two weeks after he started playing again, Carmelo Anthony is getting a public (and official) acknowledgement from the NBA for his performance on the court. And by that we mean he was named the Western Conference Player of the Week on Monday.
This marks the first time that Anthony's won a Player of the Week award since March 10, 2014, when he was still playing for New York. As for this most recent honor, Portland went 3-0 over the past seven days, with victories over Oklahoma City and Chicago (twice). And Anthony held averages of 22.3 points, 7.7 rebounds and 2.7 assists during that trio of games.
He also had his first double-double since he was on the Thunder.
Now this honor is but a blip on the career resume of a 10-time All-Star and ex-NBA scoring champ, but it could serve as ammunition for people who want to say some variation of "I told you so" based upon a three-game sample size. Do what you will, though it's pretty likely that you'll forget all this by Wednesday evening.
Prior to signing his deal with Portland, Anthony hadn't played an NBA game since November 8, 2018. During that year-plus involuntary career-gap it became readily obvious that Anthony had a very vocal group of backers on both NBA rosters, and also online. On Monday, some of that latter group showed up to play up the NBA's decision to give Anthony this award over, say, James Harden, who averaged 42.0 points per game this past week thanks in large part to a 60-point performance on Saturday that he put up in just three quarters. Others, well, they sided with Luka Doncic. This collection of reacts has a little bit of range.
Oh, and also congrats to Giannis Antetokounmpo. Sorry we couldn't fit you in until the end here.
