Carmelo Anthony Reflects on ‘Fun’ Time With Nuggets

Carmelo Anthony was a Denver Nugget for seven and a half years, and even though the whole thing ended badly in 2011, those seasons clearly still mean something to him.

He recently sat down with DJ Siddiqi of Casino.ca to talk about his favorite teammates and what made playing in Denver different from anywhere else in his career.

He kept circling back to the good times he had.

"It was fun basketball, and that's the only way that I knew how to get together and have fun and bring everybody together," Anthony said. "Those guys showed me that, and I learned from the veterans that were doing that. I was young, I was following their lead, even though I had the keys to the organization."

"To say I was following their lead, I would do what I do on the court, and then I would learn from those guys."

It's easy to forget just how good Anthony was in Denver.

He averaged 24.8 points, 6.3 rebounds and 3.1 assists across 564 games and picked up four All-Star selections along with four All-NBA nods.

The franchise made the playoffs six times in his eight seasons there, and the 2009 Western Conference Finals run got Denver within one round of the NBA Finals before the Los Angeles Lakers ended things.

He also scored 13,970 points as a Nugget, still fourth in franchise history.

Anthony named J.R. Smith, Kenyon Martin, Marcus Camby and Andre Miller as some of his favorite guys to play with, and he threw in Allen Iverson and Chauncey Billups too.

Those veterans taught him how to lead while keeping the locker room loose, which is a balance not a lot of young stars figure out that early.

For years after the trade to New York, the relationship between Anthony and the Nuggets was pretty much nonexistent.

That has slowly started to change.

He shouted out Denver during his 2025 Hall of Fame speech and the organization returned the love.

Earlier this season he even interviewed Nikola Jokic on NBC, which felt like another step toward closing the gap.

Denver went 54-28 this year before the Minnesota Timberwolves knocked them out in six games during the first round.

Jokic put up 27.7 points, 12.9 rebounds and 10.7 assists in the regular season, and with a long-term extension expected this summer, the franchise is building around him for the foreseeable future.

Denver is firmly in the Jokic era now but that doesn't erase what Anthony did before him though.

Anthony pulled the Nuggets out of an eight-year playoff drought and gave that city something to care about again.

The grudges on both sides have mostly faded at this point, and it feels overdue.