Because We Expected Carmelo Anthony To Have a 3.7 GPA?

Folks are having some fun today with the revelation that Carmelo Anthony had crappy grades in his first semester at Syracuse University, courtesy of an excerpt in Jim Boeheim's upcoming book Bleeding Orange.

"Carmelo did his work, went to class and never gave us any trouble. He made four C's and a D in his first semester, and if anyone wants to roll his eyes at that, plenty of freshmen that aren't carrying a basketball team on their back do a lot worse. But we couldn't put him in for the Wooden Award because his grades weren't good enough. Nevertheless, this much is certain: No college basketball player in America was better than freshman Carmelo Anthony over the course of the 2002-03 season."

According to Wall Street Journal reporter Chris Herring, Boeheim let Anthony know he was going to put the academic info in the book. Boeheim also says he was actually trying to make a good point about Melo...

"The point I was trying to make, and maybe did not succeed in, was that I was impressed with how he did as a first-semester freshman. We had talked about this before, but I'll call him again to explain what I was getting at. I wanted to try to make clear that he did do his work, and that he was engaged as a college student."

Personally, I could care less what Carmelo's grades were, so long as he was doing the minimum he needed to do academically. He wasn't at SU to learn. He was at SU because he felt like he had to go to college for one year before going to the NBA, which is where he actually wanted to be. His eventual job did not require good grades, or even a college degree.

We care about basketball player grades because the system requires us to, but, seriously, so long as you're doing what you gotta do to stay eligible...whatever.

As for Boeheim putting the grades in the book as a dig to Carmelo, I'm not sure that makes any sense. Boeheim's taken so much heat for his players not getting good grades, I doubt he wanted to fan that flame.