Carmelo Anthony On His Father Being Puerto Rican Young Lord: 'It’s The Version Of The Black Panther'

Carmelo Anthony is one of the greatest scorers the league has ever seen but he overcame a lot of off-court adversity to get to where he is. He lost his father at the age of two and recently appeared on Dwyane Wade's podcast 'The Why' to discuss how he learned more about who his father was.

Carmelo Anthony first revealed the extent of his discovering Puerto Rican ties and how people around him told him he grew up to look just like his dad

“It wasn’t until high school when I went to Puerto Rico and they wanted me to play on the Junior National Team, representing Puerto Rico. I knew I was Puerto Rican, I didn’t know the ties. I knew my dad was Puerto Rican but I didn’t know how deep it goes. Honestly, that was a moment of like, I have to go figure this out. I gotta start asking questions because now this void of not having a dad is like damn I’m about to make it to the NBA, I wish he was here…you start having all of these moments, I’m doing it for him. …Everywhere I would go in Brooklyn they would say ‘Ay, yo you look just like your dad. You walk like your dad, you talk like your dad. Like your whole aura is your dad’."

Anthony then discussed his father's aura and the people he hung out with. In his discovery of who his father was, Anthony learned that he was a 'Young Lord', a Puerto Rican version of the Black Panther, as Anthony described it.

"As I started to discover, I realized my dad was a Young Lord. Young Lords are basically the Puerto Rican version of Black Panthers. It’s the version of the Black Panther depending on who you actually ask…So I started digging deeper into what is a Young Lord. Oh, he looks fly. So you start going now I can use the internet. Now I start pulling up pictures and researching and like wow that’s where I get it from.”