Off-Court Events Haunt Anthony

The spotlight on the Denver Nuggets’ Carmelo Anthony has turned more harsh because of a series of recent incidents.

The latest came Thursday, when a DVD made it to television stations in Baltimore and Denver showing Anthony in the background while another unnamed man threatens that people who tip police about drug deals can wind up being killed.

“To be honest, ever since I came back from the Olympics, with all the incidents that have happened, I’ve been trying to take four steps forward,” Anthony said. “But every time I take four steps forward, I have to take two steps back because there’s always something going on.”

He said he was merely visiting friends when captured on the video, and was not participating in any crimes.

“I would never have thought that this would get as big as it is,” he said. “It’s just bad timing right now, because everything is coming down on me at once. People fail to realize and see the good stuff that I do,” he said.

Anthony’s agent, Calvin Andrews, said Anthony “did not knowingly participate in the production of this DVD and does not approve of its message or content.”

In a written statement, Andrews said Anthony visited with people from his old neighborhood in Baltimore last summer.

“Carmelo has never denied the fact that he comes from a tough neighborhood. He does not condone some of the things that happen there and has worked very hard to rise above that difficult environment,” Andrews said.

Anthony’s public image began to change last summer, when he was criticized for complaining about his lack of playing time on the U.S. team in the Olympic Games in Athens, Greece.

In September, Anthony, 20, was involved in a scuffle in a New York bar after a man identified as his girlfriend’s former boyfriend spit a drink in the face of the woman, MTV host La La Vasquez.

Two New York men were arrested last week after they were found trying to extort $3 million from Anthony in exchange for not releasing a tape of the scuffle to the media.

Last month, a travel bag Anthony tried to carry through security in a Denver airport was found to contain less than an ounce of marijuana.

Charges against Anthony were later dropped after a friend admitted that the marijuana belonged to him and is now facing a misdemeanor drug charge.

Jim Boeheim, Anthony’s coach at Syracuse, says that his former player “needs to make better decisions about where he’s going and who he’s going with. You can learn those things in college, but he only had one year. When you’re learning that in such a big spotlight, there’s more potential for problems.”

Nugget General Manager Kiki Vandeweghe said that Anthony was not the first to make the difficult transitions involved in becoming an NBA player.

“He now for the first time in his life has a lot of money and people know that,” Vandeweghe said.

“He has a much bigger celebrity status. When that happens, people tend to come out of the woodwork. People are looking to take advantage of you and get close to you.”

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Associated Press contributed to this report.