Carmelo Anthony is often criticized for failing to win at a high level in the NBA, but when he was in college, his track record was literally spotless. He played one season at Syracuse and led his team to the national championship before leaving for the NBA. His coach there, Jim Boeheim, has seen him at virtually every stage of his career since thanks to his stint as an assistant coach for Team USA.

He worked with Anthony as an 18-year-old freshman in college, and he worked with him as a 32-year-old elder statesmen at the 2016 Olympics. Now that Anthony falls firmly in the latter camp, the NBA has largely lost interest in him. But the coach who has had more success with him than anyone told Frank Isola and Brian Scalabrine on SiriusXM NBA Radio that Anthony can still succeed in the NBA.

To Boeheim, it comes down to finding the right role for Anthony. He is no longer a superstar, but he can still contribute in certain situations.

"He's in great shape, he works out every day. He's 35, but he can't go 35-40 minutes every game and get you 25 points, no, but he doesn't want to do that. He's said that several times already. If he isn't the best available guy to go in the second unit on a good team, not a young team, a good team that has a chance to win, if he's not a guy that can go into any one of seven or eight teams and be, if not the best guy, certainly the second-best, the second-best guy on the second unit, and I think in the past people felt that he didn't want to do that, and he didn't. But I think right now he'd be fine doing that, and I don't think there's any of those teams he wouldn't help if he was a guy playing 16-20 minutes per game on the second unit. If he's having a good game, you'll play him a little bit more, if he's not having a big game, then you know, you don't use him at the end."

Anthony has never averaged fewer than 29.4 minutes per game during a season, but he displayed a newfound willingness to play a smaller role during a recent interview with Stephen A. Smith on ESPN's "First Take." He stated that he was fully prepared to come off of the bench, and that he believed he deserved a 15-man roster spot.

He admitted how difficult coming to terms with that was, and actually following through with it is another matter entirely. But a trend has arisen as Anthony has publicly campaigned for a job. Virtually every player or coach that has gone on the record about him still believes he can play. That is no guarantee of future production, but it's not something that should be dispelled entirely, either. Anthony is no longer the superstar he once was, but for the first time, he is acting as if he is aware and at peace with that. That makes him a far more valuable potential addition than he has been in recent years.