The 10-time NBA All-Star and former national champion at Syracuse sat down with Rich Kleiman for a lengthy conversation to discuss his all of his career accomplishments – from his one season in college hoops to his decision to walk away from the game after 19 seasons in the NBA.
Video Transcript
We went 17 and 0 that year and the, and the carry on.
People don’t talk about that.
We have a carefree like we were just like, man, we ain’t got a shot of hell.
We just gonna go out there and just hoop.
I told my agent Leon at the time, I still, Lee, I don’t wanna talk to no team like I’m just ready to walk away from this.
Like it’s the game don’t love me the way that I love the game no more.
It’s time for me to go.
Peace everybody.
I’m Carmelo Anthony, and this is boardroom Cover Story.
What’s up everybody?
This is Rich Kleman and this is February’s boardroom cover story.
Today we are in Red Hook, Brooklyn with my man, future Hall of Famer, CEO, entrepreneur.
Welcome to the show, Carmelo Anthony.
Yes, Ban Ban indeed, man, for real.
You like that intro?
I like that.
Get used to that.
Your year at Syracuse, do you now looking back at your career, look at that year maybe as one of if not the greatest year of your entire basketball journey?
1000%.
Even though we won it.
What made that year was the fact that we weren’t expected to do nothing, like in the, at that year, like the year before Syracuse wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t as good.
And it’s a very similar situation to what my son is going in right now to next year.
So me coming in there with 34 freshmen at the time where it was like there was no way freshmen are leading any team in college at this point in time.
So, I guess we have a carefree, like, we were just like, man, we ain’t got a shot of hell.
We just gonna go out there and just hoop, and we all going through the same thing.
We going through classes, we’re going through, you know, practice together.
We all freshmen, so you go through the same thing.
And we connected and we bonded us first and then we started to bond with Like like Hakeem and all those, you know what I mean, he just became slowly, slowly, slowly like I, everybody coming together, and when they came together, it was just a feeling that Yo, we are, we can, we really good.
Like it went from like we, we, like we all to a world, we beat Missouri, like they top 7 or world Georgia Tech, and this is when they had Jerry Jackie, Chris Bosh, like we beat them on Big, big Monday or Super Tuesday or something.
They still wasn’t giving us our love.
So we like, uh, we’re gonna protect home court.
We ain’t gonna, we, we don’t, we ain’t gonna lose in the carrier though.
And we didn’t.
We went 17-0 in the, in the, in the carrier dome, but that year.
is definitely at the top when it comes to like one of the, one of my, like my best year all the way through.
I had the most fun.
It was a carefree, playing basketball, working in the gym, teammates gathering like it was totality that that was my favorite year.
Kevin has not to the same degree, I don’t think because they weren’t able to win a championship, but similar kind of sentiments around his year at Texas and He said to me once that like he really did actually think about staying for a year just because of the joy, but then like Rick Barnes was like, bro, go.
Did you like with the fun you had, was it really a thought like maybe I’ll run this back?
Yeah, I was coming back.
You were, yeah, I was coming back.
If we wouldn’t have one, I was coming back.
And what Boeheim was like, I just never even thought about, like, again, college basketball, right?
We grew up on that, like, you know what I’m saying?
We grew up uh in the, on the Big East and we grew up on the ACC like.
Down in Baltimore, KD can attest to that like, we love college basketball, you know what I’m saying?
So we going to college, like we, what they don’t go to pro where we from out of high school.
So we going to college and The way that you gravitate towards college, like you start looking at college like, man, I have to do this when I get to college, and like, you know, you, it’s a pecking order when you get to college.
So, the process of like growing as a person, as an individual, growing your game, seeing your game grow, the fan base growing with you, the school now, and then you start to kind of experience conference tournament, you start to experience the big games, you start experiencing the, the NCAA March Madness tournament.
It’s like, now your school just getting popping.
It’s, it’s February, March, so now you’re starting to see everything kind of blossom by the time April here, the whole university is crazy, right?
The whole city is crazy, so you don’t wanna leave that.
And for me, I was like, nah, like I ain’t, they were screaming one more year.
I’m like, man, listen.
I thought you stayed in school for 4 years.
Like I ain’t, why y’all trying to kick me out.
I ain’t trying to leave it.
I’m, I’m trying to experience this, but once we won it, Beeha was like, oh, you gotta, you gotta go.
Don’t even think about coming back here.
You’ll be in the Carrier Dome a lot next year, yeah, yeah, I’m in there.
We, we bringing the energy back, bringing the lifestyle back to the cus, you know what I mean?
I wanna bring that, that vibe, you know what I’m saying?
I wanna bring the energy.
I wanna bring the music.
I wanna bring the pregame.
I wanna, you know what I mean, like the sweets and all like I just wanna bring.
That type of energy and you know to the to the dome you and Kayen, he was born more maybe stay mellow than you.
What’s the feedback you give on the game going into Syracuse next year?
Like what does coach Melo say that he’s got to do to prepare for freshman year?
I try to make him look at it longevity, right?
So let’s look at this in in in in 4 years, right?
So from your freshman year to your senior year.
Don’t look at individual moments that may not work good for you or you may have a bad game, or you may had a bad week like.
Let’s look at this in your freshman year to your senior year, your development, how much better you got, how fast you got better.
Think about what you’ve done to, to get better, right?
You stayed in the gym, you listen.
You, you, you watch, you observe, right?
You put the work in.
Now you’re reaping the benefits of those seeds that you were complaining about 4 years ago, and the work that you didn’t want to put in, now you’re able to see it blossom, and it’s on full display.
So I give from that perspective, for one, as far as film goes, we watch film, we watch games, it’s like, I used to watch games and like when I was playing, and I’ll put it on the, put it on the on the iPad and write the notes.
Yo, at 1 at 1:56 in the first quarter, yo, you missed that steal one at 2 minutes, yo, you should have shot that.
Why you ain’t pull up?
Why you got like, it’s like very like broken down on his game.
So now we, I go back and look at him like, yo, damn, like, yo, you fixed that, boom, you fixed that, right?
Look how many times I said you ain’t, you wasn’t playing no defense or you was lazy on defense.
Now look at you locked into it, so you don’t fix that.
Right, so I, I try to break the game down to him that way because the Xs and O’s, you got that, you know how to play basketball, you, you, you play the right way, you know how to score, right?
So it’s like it’s these little in-between things that we really gotta fix.
I’ll say 1, right?
I’ll say 45 and you know like 45 means oh you got signals?
Yeah, it’s like we it’s like.
You know, it’s, that’s how me connect.
You know he look old, be like, 033 knows that’s get to that spot.
That’s fire, man.
Were you soured at all on the league from some of the bulls you had to deal with at the end of your career?
I’ll tell you when I was, I’ll tell you when I felt what you’re talking about.
Going from Oklahoma to Houston, right?
And it’s, it’s not like The basketball.
I was just like the position that I was in, um, of, of the unknown and feeling like you don’t belong here, right?
So when you feel like you don’t belong in a situation, that situation ain’t gonna work out.
No matter how hard you try to maintain it and be professional and go to work every day, that energy is just not gonna match, especially if they don’t want you, right?
So I, I, to your point, I felt it at that moment.
It was like damn, like.
It’s really turning their back on me and they said that like I, I know I ain’t say that like this is what’s happened though now all of a sudden this, so it was always like they was one, they was one up in me in this sense, right?
So when I got away from them like That may be something that was supposed to happen to you.
Like it, it, it, it was supposed to happen to you.
It was written that way, like you, you was fighting something that was supposed to happen already.
And when you get a different mindset and clear it on that like now I look at that situation and laugh like damn like this, that situation was just bad timing for me as opposed to going through it and trying to figure it out and then once you’ve trying to figure it out.
Everybody else is giving you the reasons of why it didn’t work or why it didn’t happen.
You stayed so level headed.
I honestly don’t think of anybody else in your position that could have done that, right?
Like your peers would speak out on your behalf.
They would talk amongst themselves.
I remember Kay would talk about how foolish everybody was like how they talking about Melo like this?
You know what I’m saying?
How did you stay so calm throughout all that?
Like you were one of the greatest players to ever play this game and And people are having a point of view like this about you that is so inaccurate, but you always stay calm.
You dealt with things that most people wouldn’t be able to deal with on a, on a totally mature sophisticated level.
Well, for me it was like literature, like staying in my books, staying in my lessons, like really separating myself from the game of basketball.
I’m like, yo, you know what?
I told my agent Leon at the time was still Lee.
Don’t have no teams.
I don’t wanna talk to no team.
Like I’m just ready to walk away from this, like, it’s The game don’t love me the way that I love the game no more.
It’s time for me to go, and that’s what I felt.
So I’m like, let me just separate myself from the game.
Don’t answer no calls from no teams because the more calls that was coming in, it was like I felt even more disrespected because it was like, yo, the calls that’s coming in and the offers that’s coming in it’s like, what?
You want me to come in and do?
Nah, nah, no, come on, you don’t want me, no come on me.
Sometimes like when somebody at your level walks away from the game, it looks from afar like you’ve transitioned easily, but how has the transition been from just not hooping, right?
Not competing and not getting that kind of fix that you were used to your entire life?
It’s challenging.
I would say in a sense because you really.
You really have to.
The longer that you just sit and wait around and and try to figure it out, like I’m gonna figure it out.
The further and further away you get from figuring it out, right?
So for me, I was able to, you know, kind of build along, you know, ideas and, and businesses and, you know, start that process probably the last, you know, 4 years as far as really like getting into it.
Uh, I always been into it, I always been meetings and phone calls, but it was like, when you playing.
That’s priority.
Like, you know what I’m saying?
So you, yeah, I can have with me, but it gotta be at this time.
I could, you know what I’m saying?
So you take the call from me, so what people are seeing now is just me really putting and sinking my teeth into everything that I’m, that I’m touching, everything that I’m involved with.
I’ve always been like that.
I think people are actually starting to see it now, so the transition for me was It was, it wasn’t challenging as much as I had other people, you know, have challenges after retirement because I, I had things already moving.
So sitting in these rooms and really, you know, look, listening and observing like that really helped me.
You know with my transit.
Do you think you’ve been able to get a ton of joy that you maybe didn’t get at the end of your career from being in the gym with Kai and that whole climb again, right?
Where it’s relatively still pure, right?
There’s a business to it now at every level, but do you get some of that love beyond just as a father but as a hooper being in the gym again like that?
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I love being in the gym like I’m I’m a gym rat, you know what I’m saying?
I love being in the gym.
I love hooping.
I love working out.
I love training.
You know, I would train, I, I would train with a 10 year old, I would train with a pro like I just love being in the, in, in the gym and that, that, that love I was talking about, it took that away from me, but I was able to get through it.
Because I had my peers, and when I was around my peers, the energy was a lot different, conversations was different, and they can relate, you know, a lot of them can relate to my situation, so it was like I needed them.
To like kind of build me back up and almost like ah Melo, like you are mellow, like you that, like you this, you that, you know what I mean?
Like you still could do this, I still, I need, I needed to hear it at that point in time.
So my peers really is the one who, you know, kinda kept me out there like that.
Fast forward to Kyle, like Kyle was a part of that process.
So he saw me going through what I was going through in the grind, getting stamped on, people saying this about me, but also coming home at night.
And being a father and yo.
That like we are doing this, this is how we move, this is, but explain it to him as it’s happening.
In real time.
Look, you see how this is happening, you see how this is playing out?
Pay attention.
You ain’t gonna understand it right now, but I’ll, I’ll come back to you at 18, right?
So now we can have those conversations.
We could be in the gym, we can, we can have a, a, a deeper connection with that.
And then the gym is just easy for us because he’s a gym rat, I’m a gym rat, and we just love being in the gym.
Now as a father, is this just like so rewarding and incredible to watch.
Yeah, yeah, it’s no better feeling.
It’s no better feeling.
Are you able to look at Denver now and hold it in a certain regard where you go, OK, that was a time in my life too that like I dominated, I performed at a high level.
The fans loved me and kind of put aside any bullshit that might have come with that situation.
Yeah, I don’t, I don’t, honestly, I don’t have any bull like there’s no bullshit for me with, with Denver, to be honest.
Uh, my only bullshit came with.
With George, like that was the only boy that I had.
I never had front office.
I had, we always had a really good relationship, Stan, we had a good relationship, you know what I mean, like we, Josh, we had a good relationship.
Chieki Vander way, like on and on, Mark, you know, Mark Walker team, like God bless his soul, like my only kind of thing was with George and maybe I, you know, I do look back and like, you know, I was young, I was young trying to figure out my game, trying to figure it out.
I gotta run the organization, I gotta represent.
And also I gotta be true to who I am, like, so I had somebody like George who was older, coach, been around the block for a long time, that really was trying to send me a message in a way.
Like if he would have delivered the message differently, I probably would have received it differently.
I, but now looking back at it like damn, he was, he was saying some shit to me, but it wasn’t the way that you should say it to that play in that situation.
But as far as Denver goes, my love for Denver is high.
Like I hold Denver.
Damn near where I whole New York’s at because it was the beginning like we built that we, we built that culture in Denver.
We changed the colors and, you know, we, we changed the culture of the NBA in a sense, you know, them powder blue uniforms like we changed that to where everybody’s like oh we gotta switch our uniforms up.
NBA started changing a lot of things after that.
So when you talk about.
Like, culturally?
Denver gotta be there because we, we took a city that wasn’t getting no eyeballs and wasn’t getting no attention outside of the Broncos and, and, and John Elway, right?
So now we, you see 15 jerseys all over the country, all over the world now.
So now you, Denver is not just in Colorado no more.
Denver is in Baltimore, Denver is in China, Denver is in You know, Philippines, like there was across the world now, so I don’t take that none of that for granted, um, which, which allows me to be at peace and hold ever.
It was almost like you guys were like a fab five like type of we had that energy impact, yeah, and that energy.
You’re nominated for the hall.
You’ll be a first ballot Hall of Famer.
Nobody questioned it.
Does that just quickly put even more perspective on like your greatness and what you were able to accomplish?
Yeah, it what it does is it allowed me to say, you know what, I did it.
Like, uh, uh, there’s nothing else I could possibly do in the, in the sport of basketball.
Like I, there’s nothing else I can do.
I Top 75 of all time.
I’m scoring champion, uh, you know what I mean?
Like, oh, I got a bunch of lot of individual accolades, right, that you can appreciate now as opposed to appreciating appreciating them then.
I don’t play with some of the greatest players.
Right, I have played with the AIs.
I’ played with a champion Chauncey.
I done played with Kenyon Martin, who’s considered one of the best power forwards, most athletic power forwards of all time.
I don’t play with 6th Man of the Year, JJR play with Defensive Player of the Year, Tyson Chandler.
I don’t play with a potential Hall of Famer Amatoha.
I like, I don’t play with a lot of, you know, I play with a lot of people, so my appreciation for the game is like.
Once, once that door open for you, there’s nowhere else to go.
Like there’s not, there’s nowhere else to go, so I gotta appreciate that.
And you’re gonna go in as a nick, right?
Just.
So knowing that Denver holds such a, you know, a strong place in your heart, but New York, I think everybody can see is like connected with you in a way that’s hard to explain.
Why do you think it clicked the way it clicked?
I think everybody that watched knew you appreciated playing in the garden.
It’s it’s really hard to explain, to be honest with you, because I went through it, right?
I don’t went through kind of against New York in a sense, right?
Like against, really against New York, like me playing like against my own fans at time, right?
So it’s like, Most people would be like, why are you loving that?
Like, why are you connected to him like, I, I, I can’t be like I don’t went through hell, I don’t went through the fire.
I didn’t took every responsibility, accountability that you could possibly take as an athlete uh here in New York.
For one, I had a greater appreciation of what it meant to play in the garden and to put Nick’s uniform on.
So I understood my assignment when I came here was I know I gotta perform no matter what is happening.
I got, I know I have to perform.
I can’t worry about what they did to to A-Rod or Jeter or, you know, Eli, like I can’t like Marbury even like I studied all of that.
I studied how they moved, I studied how the media moved.
I like I made, I really sat down and studied all of that to the point where I was like, yo, I’m not.
I would never ever allow any of that to happen to me, and that was like my shield when I came to New York.
Like I’m just gonna play ball and whatever happened, whatever y’all say is cool.
Like I, I’m just gonna go hoop and play basketball.
I think my appreciation of for one, wanting to come to New York and wanting to embrace New York and really wanting to give New York an opportunity and a chance.
People will always respect that, right?
Um.
I think the fact that I went through what I went through in New York.
And it was only, it was one-sided when I was going through it, and I’ve never spoke on it.
I’ve never said anything.
I stood tall on, on, on everything.
I just backed out of it.
And I think once I left, it was a different type of appreciation because it’s like damn like it ain’t we still going through what we, we still going through this.
We still go.
I come back and Posing his head.
I’m like, Yo, what’s what he’s like, man, it’s, it’s the same process and I’m like, fans just got the opportunity and fans grew up, like I’m matured, I grew up, you know, I got some I got growth, the fans that was at that point in time has grown up and got new perspectives and able to understand.
1 and 1 equals 2, not 1 and 1 equals 3.
So, I think that’s what we’re seeing now.
I think we’re seeing a uh uh a greater appreciation of somebody who really came to New York, really try to put New York on their back.
Somebody who’s outside, I’m, I’m, I’m in the streets, not in the back, you know, I’m in the streets, I’m talking to people, I’m with kids on courts, I’m in the rec centers, I’m in the hood, I’m in the, like I’m all over the place, so.
Well once you build that connection, it’s hard to break that bar.
Is there a moment, whether it’s in New York or at any point in your career that keeps you up at night.
Yeah, uh, it’s a couple, it’s a couple seasons, uh.
The season we have, and I think about the season we have with with AI came to Denver, like that’s always like a I think about that all the time.
That following season, the Western Conference final season like against Kobe, that was always think about that.
And then the season here in New York, like that, that 1213, I think it was 1213, something like that you lost to Indiana, yeah, it was like those seasons were really like.
Jumpstart seasons in a sense because we were in Denver, we were building something.
We were really creating something like from 0304 when he, when I came in, every year we were trying to build up to That moment in 0809, right?
And however way it went, it went, but we were building up to that and I think about those moments.
I think about.
Inbound plays at the end of the game, we could have been playing Orlando, like, I think about, if we didn’t make some of those plays down the stretch, you know.
What would have happened if, you know, COVID or would have came to Denver like what does 20 mean going back to Denver at home?
Like it’s a big difference going back home 11 as opposed to 20, right?
So it’s like I, I, I think about all of those scenarios.
I still watch the games.
I’ll be yelling at the TV like, no, I know like I’ll be able to catch myself chilling out I don’t shoot that.
It’s like, oh shit like this shit been, you know, years ago.
What kind of changed when you retired in terms of mindset and how you looked at your team and said, all right, cool, like next chapter because you had done quite a bit and probably didn’t have to do anything.
Like basketball and the game of basketball for me.
It’s like, everything is old to that.
Like I’m able to do all these other endeavors in business because of the game of basketball, so I will always be like indebted to that.
So, I like 30 years, like I don’t give 30 years of my life.
To the game of basketball.
And now I done reached the pinnacle of the game of basketball, which is Hall of Fame, right?
So it’s like that took me 30 years, 31 years to reach that.
So now I know I’m, I’m behind the 8 ball now, when you think about other endeavors, and that’s 30 years that it took me for to master one craft, right?
So now I’m like, oh, what’s my, what’s my next challenge?
You don’t have another challenge like basketball challenge.
You don’t have those challenges, nothing is gonna get you competitively going.
To where as though you gotta lose sleep and where as though you gotta fight and you got strate like it’s, it’s a different type of strategizing now.
So it makes it more, it makes it fun, it makes it more relaxing, it makes it me able to see things from a broader perspective as opposed to being so gung ho and so tight on everything, so.
Building that wasn’t easy.
Like building that is not easy.
Building an enterprise or trying to build an enterprise or you think you’re trying to build an enterprise, it’s not easy.
I, I had a lot of things going on as I was playing individually that I was kind of plan the seed on.
But I was still 1 ft in and 1 ft out.
So there was information that I wouldn’t be getting sometimes because it’s just, yo, we know he focused on the game, like we got it.
So it was a, you know, it was a disconnect between that.
So now by the time I get it, it’s a different perspective.
So we all had to get on the same page.
Being outside the the game, retired allowed me to actually.
Focus on everything that I had to focus on.
Put the team together, structure it the way that I, that I feel like is a scalable business as opposed to these doing this individual business and the wine and the candy business and the lifestyle.
Now these, these little silos now all come under one umbrella, right?
So that wasn’t, I couldn’t wrap my mind around that playing.
Because it just wasn’t, I didn’t have enough capacity to do that, the way I wanted to do it.
So I had to really trust my team and trust the people that was on my team to keep the train running so by the time I’m done, now we could come to the table and really plan this out.
I always am impressed because similar to how you move in general like you don’t feel the need to boast about everything you’re working on you didn’t need to take press releases all throughout your career of everything you were working on but then I’d run into a meeting and someone would say that you know Melo invested in the last round or Melo’s down with this thing as well, or I was just talking to Melo about this.
And I knew you were planting the seeds, but now when you look at what you have started to cultivate and what you have in motion, what is the kind of enterprise that You have built what consists of all those silos.
Yeah, so like individually, I had Creative 7, right, was like that was a production, right?
So that was all content.
And then I had the wine business, right?
Vened 7 for state was like, OK, man, it decided they gonna start that business, and we go get in the wine industry.
All right, cool.
I’m in Portland at this time in Oregon, you know what?
I’m really intrigued into the cannabis industry.
Like, I’m, this is the perfect place for me to start, plant.
You know, observe, see what’s happening, get my feet into the door.
And then the lifestyle brand, right?
The, the, the Stay mellow whole overall just the, you know, Stay mellow is a mindfulness, wellness, lifestyle brand, right?
Where it’s like the message speaks for itself, when in doubt, stay mellow, you know, remaining calm in the, in the midst of chaos, like, that goes with anybody, anything, any product.
So I, I think at the end of the day, that will kind of be the North Star, like, cause you can, you can, I can scale that on a much greater scale globally, I can, I, I can scale that.
And again, mental health, mental awareness, you know, uh, stress, you know, depression, like all of them things go plays alongside the lifestyle of State Melo, right?
And just what is included into that lifestyle, right?
It’s like Yeah, it’s cool to be cool, like, you know what I mean?
It ain’t, you could be cool in your own right.
Like it’s, it’s, it’s cool to wanna be on boats and it’s cool to wanna be on bikes.
It’s cool to wanna have a fly whip and it’s cool to wanna have a dog, like, you know, it’s like these things are cool, like, so for me, I try to do things that again, I, like I, I deal with on a daily basis.
So to stay meow lifestyle brand is It’s really that.
It’s like hotels, like how do we tap into hotels and do these stay mellow retreats and how do we do stay mellow resort and like, you know, real fly.
Everything that I do have to connect within the ecosystem some way, shape or form.
Like if it ain’t, if I’m doing something for a magazine, OK, how do we incorporate the wine?
How do we incorporate this?
Like, let’s really Work together on this.
So now we, well, you know, Creative 7 is the, is the umbrella to what we have going on, working on a, like a little small kind of creative agency, design agency, so it’s like that, that’s, that’s gonna take, you know, some time, but everything is connected to Creative 7 now at this point.
It’s interesting that you are so mellow, bro, you know what I’m, I really are so mellow, um, which is why the brand works and why it’s so believable and you’re super mellow when you’re sipping on your wine.
You guys have done a really good job.
Like I’ve watched and I see the story you’re weaving and I see the way you guys are building it, the way you’re honoring it, right?
Like the pace that you’re building it at.
What was the like rationale behind it?
Um, obviously wine is.
Very present like NBA players love a good bottle of wine, but you’ve done something that seems like you really love this business.
Most of the things that like I try to do is like things that I.
No I’m gonna entrench myself into like things that I’m affiliated with every single day, things that I do every single day.
I try to stay in those lanes.
I try not to go outside things that I’m not thinking about, I’m not focused on, or just may not be in front of me at this moment.
Like I’m not gonna try anything new.
But as far as the, the win goes, I thought about it.
I’m like, yo, this is like nobody is doing it.
Like, nobody, no athlete is really, you know, really doing it.
You had a couple of athletes.
You know who was doing it, but they, they really, really knew about the industry or they grew up in some of those regions that they knew about the industry, but Nobody really was just like, you know what?
I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m going to take this, this industry.
Like I’m, I’m stepping into this industry, and I’m gonna do it in the, in the, in the classy, creative way where I can merge two worlds, where I can take the old world of wine and the old way of thinking to this new energy, this new world of of, of wine and thinking.
And I’m gonna be the conduit between the old world and the new world.
And once we, once I came up with that, everything else just flows off of that, right?
I, I think the fact that I kept it authentic as far as going back to France, uh, I could have went to Burgundy, I could have went to Bordeaux, like I, I went to Chance to do with the pop, like I went to a place like if you know it.
You know what I’m doing.
You know what, you know the, the, the, the strategy.
If you, if you know Santa the Pop.
For so long that the wine business was like Like the F&B business, like, don’t get into it.
Like don’t, people would tell you don’t do no restaurant, don’t do this, don’t certain things they would tell you to do, and the wine industry was one of them.
You don’t make no money, they say, you know, it’s just a lot of things that go on.
So, I was traveling and I’m like, you know what, like I, I wanna do my own blend.
Like I, I feel like I don’t work my way to do, you know what I mean, my palate don’t work this way, you have to do its own blend and I went, I went over to France and I’m like, you know what?
I’m doing my own blend.
So we was working on one wine, so we went over there to just figure out one wine and just the experience that was created around that one wine.
I’m like, wow, like.
Here’s a business.
He’s a business.
Yeah.
Yeah, I don’t really sell shit to do with the pop in the US.
How about we do it now?
How about we do a deal.
I help you guys with distribution in the, in the, in, in the states.
We come over here, we, we do all the creative, we do all the strategy, all we need is to pick the, pick our, our plot and let us build from there.
And It grew, right?
And it’s like, but I had to put the work into that.
I had to go over there, I had to like sit down and like go through some of the harvest and like go through like talking to the people and sitting down with the farmers at their house and eat, like it’s small towns we’re talking about over here, so they had to really believe in what I was trying to do and make sure that it wasn’t no funny business.
So that made it fun for me, going over to France and picking wine and, you know, and, and, and Pruning and, you know, those are wine terms, but like you, you’re doing all these things out there you realize this is very special what these people really do like, so I, I had a different type of appreciation for the wine.
So I bought a lot of that energy back to the locker room and back on the bus and oh man, he gonna mellow with the wine again Melo with his case, Melo it was, you know, it was all like soft stories at at, at that time.
Until everybody like, yo, what we drinking like yo, what’s tonight?
What we drinking?
What are we going to eat, yo, I’m at the restaurant, send me, let me know the name like.
I thrive off of that.
They gotta want to mess with you.
They gotta want to believe in what you have going on.
Like you gotta be a, an authentic person to sell something that’s authentic, right?
You gotta believe it, right?
So I, I think for me, all of the things that I’ve been through on the court and we were talking about New York and Denver is like that just built me up and created something to where I can right now.
People know that whatever product I put out there is gonna be a very authentic product, true to myself, something that I believe people would enjoy it.
I, I take my experience with basketball, like USA basketball and traveling.
So I’m trying to create the World Cup of wins in a sense, that’s like how I look at my strategy.
Like, OK, I’m gonna go to France, and these are the reasons we’re gonna hit France.
I’m gonna go to Australia.
I’m over there with the NBL.
I’m gonna hit these regions.
I’m going to China, you know, we’re gonna figure out China.
I went to Lisbon, Portugal, we’re gonna figure out Portugal, South Africa, we’re gonna, we gonna figure out South Africa.
So like I’m, you know, Argentina, Chile, like we gonna hit all of these.
Kind of places around the world, man, and just really create the, the, the World Cup of wine.
So it’s not just uh based off of the wine, it’s content too, like we will be creating TV shows around the wine and and traveling and, you know, identifying winemakers like on the ground and like how do we pair that with the wine and you know, it’s, it’s, I mean with the with the cannabis and the food, it’s just like the experience so.
You know, I’m, I’m like Bourdain over here, you are, bro.
You know what I mean?
I’m like Anthony Bourdain over here, man, and it hasn’t been done yet.
Like when you look at it, I’m giving away a lot of my.
You didn’t mention media, which is funny because you probably never thought of yourself in that way, but yeah, it’s like you never really thought about yourself in that way and if you would ask me like, yo, you think I’m gonna do a podcast, I probably would have been like I can’t tell bro like because you’d be good, you’d be really good, but I could see you not wanting to have any time for it but you’ve actually done it.
And once again stayed on brand, like it’s you and you’re really good at it.
Well, thank you for that, for one.
So the fact that I was um that I’m able to have these global experiences, right?
is, is, and then being in these certain rooms and, and, and be around certain people and understand certain experiences and what people want and needs, right?
When I was talking about the restructuring of everything, Creative 7 becomes now the media company.
Right, and for so long, I wasn’t looking at Creative Seven as the media company.
I was looking at it as just, we’re a production company, we’re gonna do some films, we will do some docs, we’re gonna create content like we are a production company.
But now once I got into the, the podcast space and the show space is like.
OK, if I’m gonna do this, then this has to be the, the media company.
So, yeah, to your point, I have to start throwing that in there like I mean I’m, I’m, I’m part of media, so I, it, it’s crazy for me to say that.
I, I’m somebody who fought the media for, forever, but call myself media, it is what it is, but you know that, you know, we, we gotta grow up, man, we, it’s good.
It’s it’s fun though.
It is, it is fun and it’s why not, right?
I think that’s the way we all look at it and I don’t think you can have a business today without some outlet of storytelling and conversation and in some ways the way I’ve seen it at least from the far, is that like that’s that’s a platform.
It’s just a platform for you to continue to control how you stay out there if you’re not sitting courtside with Eli and the Coors commercial.
Young players are thinking about business earlier than I have ever seen.
Aside from focus on the game first, what advice would you give?
Yeah, so, I mean, the more money you make.
The more money you will feel like you need to spend, right?
And I, I, I do feel like Today is so many opportunities that They don’t even think about, like, it’s hard for them to even think about a lot of the opportunities, right, as a 17 year old kid who’s making 10 million in you know, in high school before you go to college, like, You know what type of business you can make, like, you know what I’m saying?
Like this is, this is, this is how I’m kicking it to my son who’s in the situation like that, right?
It’s like, now I know you want the brand.
Like, but sometimes it’s brand alignment, right?
You gotta watch out you, who you, who you align yourself with, what brand you align yourself with.
You gotta also, if you gonna be taking this money, you gotta understand how this actually works.
You can’t just take the money and Post, like you gotta really understand how this works.
Just get all the information that you really, really need.
You have an opportunity to take care of a lot of things that you may want to take care of, right?
Family, you could take care of your family right now.
You get what I’m saying?
Like, so by the time you get to the NBA, you know, God’s willing, it’s Basketball for you.
Like you should be setting it up right now to where by the time you get there, it’s all basketball.
And it’s almost reversed.
Handle your business.
Handle your like where as though I had to, well, we had to play, be 1 ft in, 1 ft out, and then after handle our business though.
They have an opportunity to handle business now before they even get to college until the NBA.
So these next 2-3 years is very pivotal on what you, what you can create, what you can do, the type of investment you can start making right now.
You can get it any deal you want right now as a 17 year old kid.
He’s in high school, really making professional money, right?
So when you have that, the amount of money that you’re making and that you have incoming.
Somebody or people should be around you telling you how to navigate this, right, because at 17 years old, you give me a $500,000 a million dollars, that’s, I’m thinking that’s going to my pocket, like, you know what I’m saying, but like if you’re able to structure this out, you can build your conglomerate before you even get to the NBA.
That’s like this is the new era.
This is the new era.
This is the new era.
You can build your business prior.
To go into the NBA.
I’ve heard people talking about studio hosts or play by play.
Once again, I’m sitting there thinking like, I think Melo would be great at it, but I just, I don’t see it, but play by play is tough.
No play by play, play by play I definitely couldn’t see you doing though I think you’d be good and I think it would be refreshing for fans to start hearing more.
Like real conversation about the game, right?
A lot of that’s been lost, but I would imagine you’ll look at any opportunity at this point, right?
Yeah, I mean the right opportunity.
I’ll look at like the right opportunity.
I’ll also look at like, um, you know, again.
I never thought I would do a podcast, yeah, right, and and Sitting at a desk and and doing play by play.
Play by play is not my DNA.
That’s not my DNA, but we wanna talk basketball, and we wanna talk the game and we wanna talk plays, and we wanna exes and like we can, and we wanna talk about the psyche of the athlete and what they’re going through at that moment and why he decided to make that decision.
I can give you.
That perspective all day.
I, for me it’s just I always had this thought process of like, man, as a player, like you’re looking at guys that play and former players like, man, why are you saying that?
Like I would never say that.
I would never go up there and do that.
I, you know, so I always said that to myself.
I think now with the way that we’re talking about the disconnect between the fans and the players or the fans in the game, like how do we kind of reignite that and bring that back together.
I think we have to hurry up and figure that out.
So having fresh new blood in there to talk the game of basketball, talk the game of basketball in different ways and different varieties, as opposed to just sitting up there at the desk and everybody’s kind of giving their opinion under 2 minutes and like that’s not the way that the game need to be told anymore.
I agree.
And in a lot of ways, your whole era has been looking at a lot of the older players on TV saying like, why are you talking about the game like that?
So then at the same time.
As your era goes into this next phase, this is an opportunity to to change that to some extent.
My goal is to honestly and I say this like intentionally like to con like close that gap because it’s a big gap between former players and current players.
Like, it’s a major, major gap.
So in the, the more time that goes on.
The more that gap is gonna be stretched apart, right?
So for me to be able to jump into that space and really kind of like have that, you know, be that conor once again to certain generations because I, you know, I had the generation before me, but I also looked at and studied the generation that was before that, right?
And I also had my generation and I’m able to, the generation after me, right?
And the generation after that, right?
So I’m, I’m in a very You know, like a very good situation where I can actually kind of control that narrative between the athletes of like, and change the narrative of like everybody that go on TV is not actually talking bad about the players.
Like I have my I have my perspective and my opinion, but I’m never gonna disrespect who you are as a man or a woman.
I’m never gonna question your integrity.
I’m never gonna question if you wanna play and cause I know all of those things as a, as a former athlete, yeah.
I say you get.
An Amazon or NBC bag and just like figure it out.
Yeah.
It it has to be right.
It has to feel like home.
It has to feel like It, I, I, I also understand it’s new, right, for both sides.
Like it’s, it’s very new for Amazon, very new for NBC so it’s like the newness of that for me is like, damn, what is this?
It’s exciting, but it’s like what is this gonna be like, you know, this is not no small task that we just gonna pop up on TV like talk the game and no this is work, like this is a real job now like either way or on either side, this is what I have to wrap my mind around in order to make that absolutely.
Appreciate you, bro.
Absolutely this is a great conversation, man.
Hopefully we find something to work on.
We’ve been talking about it.
We’ve been talking about it for a while.
Let me get a bottle of wine or something though.
I got something for you here, man.
I actually bought you a gift, man.
Yeah, I bought you a gift.
I give it to you off camera, man.
Appreciate you, bro.
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February cover story with the one and only Carmelo Anthony.
Peace.
