A high school star at Towson Catholic in Baltimore, Anthony returned home last week, scoring 32 points to lead the Denver Nuggets to a 118-92 win over the Wizards. In his lone college season, he led Syracuse to its first NCAA championship, then was taken by Denverwith the No. 3 selection in the 2003 NBA Draft. Now in his fifth season, Anthony is averaging 25.8 points, 5.4 assists, and 5.1 rebounds per game.
1 How much has your USA Basketball experience helped you as a player? It helps your confidence. It helps motivate you to play the NBA season after playing with those guys you’re on the team with. You learn so much being on a team with 12 other stars. You get a sense of how good your own team could be when everybody’s on the same page.
2 What’s your best memory of playing in Baltimore? No single memory, just enjoying high school basketball. Being able to travel from school to school, playing at different high schools.
3 Denver is so different from Baltimore. What is your life like there? You can’t breathe out there. The altitude out there is serious. It’s different. I’m used to a Baltimore life, a New York life, everything is fast paced. Denver’s kind of slow — slows me down, slows everybody down. But I think it’s a great place to be. It keeps me out of trouble. It keeps you focused. Only thing you can really do is focus on basketball.
4 What kind of feelings to do have when you come back here and play? It’s always good to play on the East Coast, wherever I’m at, New York, Jersey, D.C., or Philly. They’re all three hours from Baltimore. It’s good to be near my family and friends, giving everybody a chance to see me play.
5 The night you come back home, Jay-Z is playing up in Baltimore, so are all your friends and family still going to come down and watch you play? They ain’t gonna do that. They’re coming out here. A lot of them want to go to Jay-Z. But they gotta come out here and support their own.
