"It’s hard for kids to make it out the hood when you don’t have hope, you don’t have no resources, you don’t have access. You have to be different, different, with a lot of luck to come out of those environments,” said Carmelo Anthony, adding that he has noticed a shift in basketball culture. “I do think it has gotten there, to this kind of rich man game.” (Adam Glanzman/Getty Images)
BALTIMORE — Carmelo Anthony used to question how fame and fortune found a kid from Myrtle Avenue yet eluded the friends who stepped over those same needles and vials to play late-night basketball games, who saw those same dead bodies in alleys, who avoided those same “dope fiends” wandering the neighborhood that inspired the television series “The Wire.”