Utah Jazz: Melo looking to even up series tonight

SALT LAKE CITY — His semblance, donning a white headband and wide smile, rises above the mountains and the Salt Lake City skyline in those bizarre television ads supposedly sponsored by "The Fans of Carmelo Anthony in Utah."

It's as if the entire world revolves around him.

The commercials — actually produced by a shoe company in hopes of making an impact in a viral, YouTube-loving world — are, of course, over the top. The world doesn't revolve around Carmelo Anthony.

But the Denver Nuggets certainly do.

Anthony is one of the best and most popular players in the NBA. As such, if the Nuggets win, he gets much of the credit — as he should.

By contrast, however, should the Nuggets lose to an undermanned Utah Jazz team that is missing 40-percent of its starting lineup in the first round of their NBA playoff series, Anthony will get his share — and perhaps a bit more — of the blame.

Tonight at EnergySolutions Arena, with his team trailing the Jazz 2-1, Anthony and the Nuggets can either regain home-court advantage or head back to Denver just one loss away from what can only be considered postseason failure.

Anthony, for his part, remains confident.

"It's not the end," Anthony said in the news conference late Friday night after the Nuggets had lost their second straight game to Utah. "It's not the end by a long shot. I can tell you that."

Carmelo Anthony, like many NBA players, has a rags-to-riches story worthy of Hollywood treatment. He was born 26 years ago next month in Brooklyn, N.Y., the son of a Puerto Rican father and African-American mother. His father, also named Carmelo, died of cancer when he was just 2.

When he was 6, his family moved to Baltimore where he grew up in surroundings akin to those depicted on the acclaimed HBO series, "The Wire."

"From drugs, to killings, to anything you can name that goes on in the roughest parts of town, we've seen and witnessed hands on," Anthony's childhood friend Kenny Minor told the Rocky Mountain News in a 2006 interview about their upbringing in Baltimore.