Carmelo Anthony is far more than just a basketball legend and future Hall of Famer. He’s a cultural icon who wrote the blueprint for the modern athlete/entrepreneur. Now, three years after his retirement, he’s built a sustainable business empire on the core principles that made him one of the most beloved, respected and successful players of a generation.
Melo was always a step ahead on and off the court. As a high school phenom at Oak Hill Academy, he immediately focused on giving back to his native Baltimore. Then, as he took over the league and became one of the greatest scorers ever to live, Melo always set his goals even higher than his three Olympic gold medals, 10 All-Star appearances, and legacy as Jordan Brand’s first signature athlete. He set out to change the way the modern athlete built out businesses, setting the stage for the modern empire he oversees today.
“He was always a visionary,” Asani Swann, Anthony’s business partner with whom he’s worked side by side for 16 years, said. “Melo was ahead of his time.”
The seeds were planted early for a budding and blooming business portfolio rooted in Melo’s north star values of thoughtfulness, curiosity, authenticity, determination, adaptability and inclusion.
“They have to want to mess with you,” Anthony said. “They have to believe in what you have going on. People know that whatever product I put out there is going to be true to myself and something I believe people would enjoy.”
As he prepares to secure his Hall spot in Springfield, an honor he sees as the crowning achievement of his brilliant career, Carmelo Anthony is, in many ways, just getting started.
Meet the many modes of Melo.
Ahead of his time
Anthony was born in Red Hook, Brooklyn, in 1984, but raised on the west side of Baltimore near the Murphy Homes Projects, where they filmed the iconic HBO series The Wire. He first met longtime manager Bay Frazier when he was a short, skinny 10-year-old, but became a close friend and confidant by the time Melo was 15, when he sprouted into a 6-foot-5 dynamo who quickly became Maryland’s best boys’ basketball player.
Anthony was always motivated to get out of Baltimore, make a name for himself, and build up the community in which he grew up.
“If you come from where we’re from,” Frazier told Boardroom, “you see everything. He witnessed drugs, prostitution, murder. When he got to where he was going, giving back was Melo’s No. 1 thing.”
Anthony emerged from Oak Hill as the country’s top recruit, proceeding to have one of the most famous freshman seasons in men’s college basketball history. Melo led Syracuse to the 2003 National Championship, ushering in the NBA’s modern “one-and-done” era with style. He then took his signature cornrows and headband to the league with the Nuggets, the third pick in a draft class headlined by LeBron James, Melo and Dwyane Wade that redefined how athletes could build businesses while still playing.
“We’ve all seen the pictures of Melo when he first came in the league,” Khalilah Beavers, Anthony’s stylist since 2008 and Stay Me7o Creative Director, told Boardroom, “and now most of those pictures are used these days as inspiration.
“As much as his draft suit was made fun of back in the day, as style and fashion evolved, it’s now looked at as something that was super cool.”
From the second Anthony left for the NBA, he stacked years of groundbreaking off-court business decisions and collaborations that helped change the way modern superstar athletes operate. His six-year, $21 million contract with Jordan Brand to be its first-ever signature athlete started a decades-long tradition that now includes Chris Paul, Wade, Luka Dončić, Jayson Tatum, Jalen Hurts and Aaron Judge. By his third year in the league, Melo was already making money moves.
Swann began her business partnership with Melo in February 2009, adding further acumen and focus for Anthony, who was already an early adopter open to learning, listening and deftly adjusting to everything thrown his way. By that time, he’d already dipped his toe in sports ownership as the co-owner of a team in the Indy Racing League and launched a production company that gave him — and his peers — a platform to control their narratives. Additionally, he stayed true to his promise to remain rooted in the place that raised him, opening The Carmelo Anthony Youth Development Center in Baltimore in 2005.
“It was instant gratification for him to give back to those kids that came up the same way he did,” Frazier said. “Then he got real savvy in business.”
Anthony and Swann quickly prioritized equity in brand deals or investments over one-off transactional arrangements. Quickly, they realized that they had to draw the athlete business playbook themselves because no such thing existed. As they built, they culled inspiration from established entities such as Martha Stewart and FUBU, who used their cultural leverage to build brand equity.
But if there was one athlete Anthony looked up to for guidance and inspiration, it was his namesake Nike boss, Michael Jordan. Frazier said MJ was the executive Melo took the most advice from, acting like a sponge whenever His Airness discussed brand building.
“He was very influential,” Frazier said of Jordan.
Following Anthony’s blockbuster trade from Denver to New York in 2011, the traits that made Melo a beloved player, star-powered pitchman, and a developing business and media mogul were only amplified under Broadway’s bright lights. Carmelo came to embody the New York spirit with a straightforward, no-nonsense approach to both basketball and life that helped him over the years in sports, pop culture and business.
“Melo is like New Yawk with the wk,” The Kid Mero, a media personality and Anthony’s co-host on the 7PM In Brooklyn digital series, told Boardroom. “He’s just a New York guy, and everybody loves that energy.”
New York also enabled Anthony to step into his personal style. As Melo’s Jordan Brand seniority grew and his fashion tastes became more refined, he and Beavers were able to add more athletic and lifestyle apparel alongside the signature shoe deal and began collaborating with other brands. And while his time with the Knicks came to a difficult end in 2017, he forged a connection to the city and its fans that withstood the test of time.
“I’m somebody who’s outside. I’m in the streets, not in the back,” Anthony said about his presence in New York. “I’m talking to people. I’m with kids on courts. I’m in the rec centers. I’m in the hood. I’m all over the place. So once you build that connection, it’s hard to break that bond.”
Transition offense
While Anthony’s tenure in New York was coming to an end, his off-court pursuits began gaining traction and legitimacy, fueled by his ever-growing fame and the many modes in which Melo appealed to the masses.
Having dabbled in production earlier in his career, in 2018, he co-founded Creative 7, which Swann said aimed to diversify the storytelling process both in front of and behind the camera. Anthony’s first project spotlighted the Young Lords in Puerto Rico, a social activist political party inspired by the American Black Panthers. The story was inspired by his own father’s younger years with the group.
While that project never got off the ground, it was a strong starting point for the company’s mission statement of creating entertainment-forward storytelling with a passion for inclusive, purpose-driven content. A+E Studios later picked up a limited series from Creative 7 called Blood Brothers, based on a book detailing the friendship between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X.
When he wasn’t ruling NYC, Anthony’s global travels produced entrepreneurial inspiration. He gradually gained fluency in wine and earned a reputation for his astute recommendations. In his waning years in the league alongside Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum in Portland, he started to become enthusiastically interested in the wine and cannabis industries. With a refined palette and a piqued curiosity, Melo decided to take a trip to France to make wine and brought Swann with him.
They visited a village in southeastern France called Châteauneuf-du-Pape, beloved by plugged-in industry experts, and created a wine blend they instantly fell in love with. When Melo found out that Châteauneuf-du-Pape wasn’t really selling in the US, he quickly saw an opportunity.
On their flight back to America, Anthony and Swann strategized on how they could turn this trip into a fully formed brand.
“No athlete was really doing it,” Anthony said. “I’m adored in this classy, creative way where I can merge the old world of wine and the old way of thinking to this new energy as the conduit between the two worlds. Once I came up with that, everything else just flowed.”
During the pandemic, the two fleshed out a strategy that allowed Anthony and Swann to flex their business savvy and the folks in France would take care of the distribution. They then formed VII(N) The Seventh Estate and released Oath Of Fidelity, the original 2017 Châteauneuf-du-Pape, in November 2022.
As VII(N) The Seventh Estate took shape, Anthony blended his passions, launching a wine-focused YouTube series and podcast in 2021 called What’s In Your Glass. Guests like Mark Cuban, Wes Moore and Mary J. Blige shared a glass of wine with Melo while discussing substantive topics. It was Anthony’s first foray into front-facing media after decades of practice as an athlete and brand ambassador, and he was good at it.
Around the same time, Melo found himself in a transitional phase in his NBA career. For the first time, the future Hall of Famer found himself in the unfamiliar position of the league, making him feel like he didn’t belong.
“When you feel like you don’t belong in a situation, that situation isn’t going to work out,” Anthony said. “No matter how hard you try to maintain it and be professional and go to work every day, that energy is just not going to match, especially if they don’t want you. I felt it at that moment. It was like, damn, they’re really turning their back on me.”
Thanks to years of dedication and diligence alongside his team, which included Swann, Frazier and Beavers, Anthony’s decades of business experience allowed him to hit the ground running even before he announced his retirement on May 22, 2023. He began to prepare for his inevitable second act, diving into literature and history.
In taking time for himself, Melo made peace with a career that brought him to the pinnacle of his profession.
As he transitioned into a new phase, Melo began to focus all his attention on putting the right team together and structuring his businesses in a scalable way. His curiosity drove him to take meetings with influential executives and further dive into the world of business.
“What’s the next challenge?” Anthony wondered.
Building a modern empire
With the pieces in place to construct a 21st-century business conglomerate, Carmelo Anthony had the time, energy, and bandwidth to see his visions through. Entering a new phase in his life, he maintained his North Star and rooted his focus in self-motivation and self-satisfaction.
“If he locks in on something he wants to do, that drives him to make himself successful,” Frazier reflected. “It’s not even for the public or the people. He really doesn’t care about that. It’s for him.”
Swann and Anthony talk all the time about creating a global footprint with everything that they work on. Throughout his diverse set of businesses, Anthony’s values and inspiration drive their core construction. From his lifestyle and wellness brand, Stayme7o, to his cannabis label, Grand National, Melo developed businesses that made a mark while setting themselves apart from crowded markets.
For fans of Anthony, this signature cool in the middle of it all is precisely what they would expect.
“It’s the mindset of just staying mellow, just remaining calm in the midst of chaos,” Anthony said. “When in doubt, stay mellow.”
Additionally, Melo’s first takes did not go unnoticed. His short-lived Glass series drew the attention of executives from Wave Sports + Entertainment, which identified great potential. Despite — or perhaps because of — Anthony’s at-times contentious relationship with the media, they saw an opportunity to blend his New York sensibilities with his global disposition in a new format.
“This idea of the Meloverse was really exciting to us,” Tunde “TD” St. Matthew-Daniel, Wave’s Executive VP of Original Content, told Boardroom. “He has all these different touchpoints and different timelines that you can spend time with. There’s Hoodie Melo from his workouts, Team USA Melo, Nuggets Melo, Knicks Melo, and now Dad Melo with Kiyan. It laid the groundwork for a show exploring the present and the nostalgia and storytelling of his very unique past.”
In his retirement, Anthony laid roots in New York, lending the perfect backdrop to build from. His years with the Knicks made him a key player in the New York sports and entertainment scene, where he built relationships even amid his own complicated relationship with the local media. When it came time to pick a co-host, he called The Kid Mero, who he had met with the Knicks at Viceland’s studio in Brooklyn. The pair struck up a friendship as Melo sat backstage to watch tapings of Desus & Mero episodes. Together, they were extremely hands-on in developing the concept, artwork, design, style, aesthetic and the name for 7PM In Brooklyn.
“I’m somebody who fought the media forever,” Anthony said. “For so long, I wasn’t looking at Creative 7 as a media company. But if I’m going to do this, I’m not doing anything stupid or corny.”
The project has granted him the opportunity to do just that. Early episodes featured guests like Jadakiss and Issa Rae, proving to St. Matthew-Daniel and Wave that 7PM could be something special. In addition to Mero, the show’s second season added a recurring rotation of guest hosts, including Rudy Gay, Kazeem Famuyide, and Monica McNutt, who was immediately impressed by how free-flowing and in rhythm the show was. Despite being a media rookie, she said, Melo understands the nuances of engaging with guests, how to make a conversation easy to listen to, and when to let things breathe.
“The more time that goes on, the more that gap is going to be stretched apart,” Melo said. “Right now I’m in a very good situation where I can actually control that narrative between the athletes and change the narrative of everybody who goes on TV is not actually talking bad about the players.”
Beyond his own endeavors, Melo has also crafted a growing portfolio of investments over the last several years. Looking at the list, which includes Overtime, Unrivaled, an expansion team in Australia’s National Basketball League and a $750 million sports private equity fund launched with Isos Capital Management, you can see the direction of Anthony’s North Star. It’s pointing him in the direction of equity, authenticity, inclusion and thoughtfulness as to where he invests his time, energy and hard-earned money.
Staying Melo
These days, Carmelo Anthony fans can see how his vision is coming to life across multiple spaces.
“What people are seeing now is me really sinking my teeth into everything that I’m touching, everything that I’m involved with,” Anthony said.
As they look forward, Melo and Swann will look for further opportunities to expand their businesses globally, including in team ownership and building a consultancy arm that will help other athletes find their entrepreneurial lanes.
While 7 p.m. is no longer game time for Carmelo Anthony, he’s always found his elite motivation from within. However, we may not have seen the end of his days courtside. As silly season for NBA TV broadcast positions continues, Anthony’s success in media will only fuel speculation that he’s a prime candidate for one of the top slots at either ESPN, NBC or Amazon. His collaborators see the unique perspective that Melo could bring to the booth.
“Execs are not doing their jobs if they’re not kicking the tires and trying to see what Melo wants to do now that he is in the media,” St. Matthew-Daniel said.
“He can change one of those shows,” Mero added.
Anthony said he’d look at an analyst job if it were the right opportunity, with an overarching goal of bridging what he called a significant gap between current and former players.
“Why run away from industries?” Melo said. “If everybody’s saying this industry is an ‘X’ billion or ‘X’ trillion dollar industry, why wouldn’t I want to be in that? Media is growing and constantly changing at a rapid rate. So I’m going to get in that industry and see where I stand.”
It’s always been more than basketball for Carmelo Anthony, and this next chapter has proven to bring forward new things that Melo didn’t even know to expect. Supplementing his booked days, he’s picked up some new hobbies at 40 years old, like hiking, fishing and golfing. Melo is excited to see his son Kiyan develop at Syracuse and will remain an active force in his development both as a player and a person.
“The fact that there’s still so much opportunity out there to grow, to develop, to help, to give,” Anthony said, “that keeps me motivated.”
