Carmelo Anthony’s influence on his son, Kiyan Anthony, to attend his alma mater won’t just be represented on a jersey, but in ink.
To show he’ll look to carry on the legacy his father established with the Syracuse Orange that included bringing the school its first and only NCAA men’s basketball championship in 2003, Kiyan tattooed an image of his dad after he won the national title.
In the original image, Carmelo held up a newspaper with a giant headline of “Champs” above a photo of himself. Kiyan’s tattoo is a remix of that moment, swapping in a graphic created by ESPN’s Grant Goldberg and Allan Fegley, where the newspaper cover instead shows the Long Island Lutheran graduate in place of his father. Kiyan also replaced “Champs” with “Legacy.”
“It’s surreal to see, honestly. When we made the edit, the focus was to make it meaningful and pay homage to the Anthony family legacy. Even if it’s a small part of a larger moment, it’s humbling to have that kind of impact,” Goldberg and Fegley told ESPN in a statement.
Kiyan committed to Syracuse in November on Camelo’s “7PM in Brooklyn” podcast. He selected the Orange from a final list that included USC and Auburn, but Syracuse was the favorite on his list.
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“Ultimately, it came down to my relationship with the staff,” Kiyan said in November. “From day one, when they started recruiting me, they made me feel like it was family. My dad’s name on the facility is special, but I want to go in there and create my own name, and I’ve already done that through my dedication in the offseason, with early-morning practices, playing at camps, playing on the circuit.
“When I think of Syracuse basketball, I think of the 30,000 fans going crazy in the Dome,” Anthony said. “We want to give Syracuse basketball our best. With Sadiq White and the rest of my teammates, we’ll put on a show for the fans at Syracuse.”
Kiyan finished high school as the 36th-ranked player in the ESPN 100 for the class of 2025. He averaged 15.2 points for Long Island Lutheran in the Nike EYBL Scholastic League in his senior season.
