SPRINGFIELD, Mass. – If there was a Mount Rushmore for women’s basketball, Sue Bird of Syosset would surely be on it as few in basketball have won championships the way she has. Former Knick Carmelo Anthony never won an NBA championship, but still became one of New York’s most beloved sports figures despite playing for a team in a stretch of little success.
They were anchors, Anthony and then Bird, of Saturday night’s Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame Enshrinement festivities and both captivated the Symphony Hall Audience with their words.
Bird left Syosset High after a sophomore season where she was a Newsday all-Long Island selection for powerhouse Christ the King in Queens and the championships kept coming after that: one state crown in high school, two national championships with UConn, four WNBA title with the Seattle Storm and five Olympic Gold Medals.
She said that even though there was no WNBA and no professional path when she was young, people made her feel there was a place for her – a future – until there was one.
“Support even came from people I didn’t even really know, people who made me feel that I belonged,” she said. “I didn’t even realize I needed to hear it: the neighborhood boys who learned I should always be the first pick at the park [or] the security guard at a St John’s University game who asked for my autograph when I was 11 years old after watching my team play at halftime and told me ‘this is going to be worth something someday.’ Nothing quite prepares you for the first autograph request from someone who isn’t related to you. Suddenly you realize other people see something.”
Anthony, a 10-time All-Star and 10th leading scorer of all-time, acknowledged that the only championship he won – leading Syracuse to the 2003 national crown as a freshman – was a jumping off point even though he was critiqued for not winning another.
“Legacy isn’t always made in championships,” Anthony said. “Sometimes it’s made in consistency and in refusal to quit and showing up over and over again when no one’s clapping.”
“I’ve been cheered [and] criticized,” he added. “They called me a scorer who couldn’t win. They said I was too loyal and they said I wasn’t loyal enough. But they didn’t know what it feels like to carry the weight of a whole city while the world is dissecting the soul they never saw.”
Anthony recounted the meager surroundings of his upbringing in housing projects in New York and Baltimore and seemed to direct many of his words to those living that experience now.
“Tonight, I don’t just step into the Hall of Fame,” Anthony said. “I carry with me the echoes of every voice that ever told me I couldn’t I walk [through] the shadows of every alley, every crack court, every empty plate. I stand for the dreamers, the doubted, the dismissed. . . . My story is your story. So when they ask you ‘where did greatness come from?’ tell them it starts in the dirt. It starts in the dark. It starts with a whisper that says ‘I will not be denied.’ ”
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.