Portland Trailblazers star, Carmelo Anthony, has been in the NBA for over 18 seasons and has made a solid name for himself in the basketball community. While dedicating most of his life to the game of basketball, don’t think that the 10-time All-Star has not been out and about experiencing the real problems in today’s world. Over the past year, Carmelo has been making it one of his top priorities to help systematically underprivileged groups of minorities to feel more equalized in today’s climate. In doing so he was nominated for the first-ever 2021 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Social Justice Champion Award, in which he has later crowned the winner.
Carmelo was one out of four other qualifiers who were nominated for the award. With all of them being NBA athletes, the others included Bucks guard Jrue Holiday, 76ers forward Tobias Harris, Kings forward Harrison Barnes, and Warriors forward Juan Toscano-Anderson. Despite not receiving an award and the title of ‘winner’ everyone who was nominated was still given a 25,000 dollar prize to the charity of their choice, while the winner was granted 100,000 dollars to the Portland Art Museum’s Black Arts and Experiences Initiative, Melo’s selected charity.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar would deliver the news to Carmelo himself who was incredibly honored to even be nominated. The 37-year-old athlete would swiftly turn to social media and express his heartfelt sincerity with the statement, “Honored, humbled, and motivated to live up to the namesake of this inaugural award. I can promise that I’ll continue to carry the torch and shine a light in places that need it the most,” followed by the hashtag “STAYME70” on Twitter. I think his peers and even fellow nominees can attest that Kareem made the right decision in recognizing Carmelo Anthony for the first NBA Social Justice Award.