The chant, the one that followed Carmelo Anthony around like his own shadow, was ‘One More Year.’ One more game will have to suffice.

Anthony, the uber-freshman who led the Syracuse men’s basketball team to its first national championship last spring, will return to the Carrier Dome to play an NBA preseason game Oct. 19. Anthony will lead the Denver Nuggets, who drafted him with the third-overall pick in June’s NBA Draft and signed him to a three-year, $12 million contract, against the Detroit Pistons.

‘I can’t wait to play in the Carrier Dome again in front of the greatest fans in the country,’ Anthony said in an Aug. 7 release. ‘I was only there one year, but it was one of the greatest years of my life.’

Tickets for the game, a 6 p.m. tip-off, went on sale Aug. 16 and cost $25 for students.

Anthony’s return to Syracuse is being engineered by Carl Scheer, CEO of Scheer Events and former NBA general manager, and Chris Cordes of Cazenovia, Scheer’s partner and 1981 graduate of SU.

‘This is a unique and memorable opportunity for Carmelo and the Syracuse fans to show their mutual affection and appreciation one more time,’ Cordes said in the release.

In the past, Cordes has brought NBA preseason games to the Dome featuring SU alumni Rony Seikaly, Derrick Coleman, Pearl Washington and Sherman Douglas. The Carrier Dome has hosted six NBA games, the most recent in 1999.

The largest crowd ever at an NBA game in the Dome was 28,602, when in 1992 the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls played the New Jersey Nets.

When Anthony comes back for his encore, that mark could fall. Aside from Anthony, the game has several juicy subplots. The Pistons feature Darko Milicic, the 7-foot Yugoslavian rookie who the Pistons selected second over Anthony. Also, Detroit, which advanced to the Eastern Conference championship, has a new coach in Larry Brown.

‘We couldn’t have asked for a better matchup,’ Scheer said.

Published on August 24, 2003 at 12:00 pm