Uncasville, Conn. — He was asked what kept him busy and motivated after his NBA All-Star career ended.
Carmelo Anthony wasted no time explaining how he has managed.
“STAYME7O cannabis,” he said with a wide smile.
The brand is one of the many enterprises the former Syracuse basketball star chose to expand his empire once his basketball career concluded. Anthony officially retired from the game in 2023 and is a 2025 inductee into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Among his other endeavors are a podcast, “7 p.m. in Brooklyn,” a venture capital firm, Melo7 Tech Partners, a fashion line (STAYME7O), a media production firm (Creative 7) and a wine label (The Seventh Estate).
NBC Sports announced last May that Anthony will provide color commentary for NBA games in 2025-26.
“I’m a guy who likes to reflect and I’m a guy who is big on timing,” Anthony said during a Friday scrum with reporters here at the Mohegan Sun Casino. “I’m a guy who’s big on the right situations happening at the right time with the right people. During my career, it just wasn’t something I could solely focus on.”
Instead, he dipped a toe in here and there and relied on his people to “have conversations for me.”
He knew the end to his athletic career was inevitable. He knew he needed to be prepared for whatever came next.
He described the period after a playing career ends as “very pivotal.”
It can be stressful, he said. It can be frustrating.
After 20 or 30 years focusing on preparing his body and mind to excel on the basketball court, he had to shift his attention to other things.
“There’s a lot of tension trying to figure out what comes next,” he said.
Anthony said he knew the transition period would not happen overnight. Instead, he built slowly and surely.
“What you’re seeing now,” he said, “we’ve been planting the seed years ago.”
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