The Nextel cell phone rings once before he reaches into his pants pocket and smothers it with his hand.

There are people around him. Lots of people. Still, curious about the call, he brings the phone up to his ear and hits the talk button.

“Hello.”

“Yo, Melo, what’s up?”

“Yo, what up?” he responds, a little louder, a little less apprehensive.

It’s Troy Frazier, the man he talks to almost every day, the man who drove 300 miles to Syracuse from Baltimore just to watch a preseason scrimmage. Frazier’s like an older brother, one of the people he spills his heart to.

“How you been?”

He’s busy. Real busy. He’s Carmelo Anthony, the No. 1-rated college basketball freshman in the nation, and in his two months at Syracuse, life hasn’t slowed down very often. Nearly every day he spends three hours at practice with the Orangemen, an hour lifting weights to build his 6-foot-8, 220-pound body and another hour honing his jump shot.

He takes five classes — math, writing, psychology, education and African-American studies — and so far even his teachers admit he’s only missed a couple. But just in case he falls behind, he spends several hours a week with a university tutor.

Even his down time isn’t really his. When he walks across the Quad, three or four people come up to shake his hand or ask for an autograph. When he goes to Konrad’s — as he does at 11:30 nearly every Thursday and Saturday night — he can’t escape to a corner without a few girls following. When he goes to a party, he’s bound to hear his name shouted on the microphone.

The attention’s so overbearing that, in a reflective moment, he’ll say, “I can’t go anywhere and not be recognized. Nope, nowhere. Them days of just being me are over. From now on, I’ve got to be Carmelo Anthony, the superstar.”

But he’s not going to tell Frazier that. Not right now.

“I been good, man. Just chillin’.”

“How’s your game looking?”

“Feelin’ good, bro. Feelin’ real good.”

Felt good since the first day he played pick-up basketball with the Syracuse team. When he walked into Manley Field House ready to scrimmage for the first time in late August, eight or nine teammates fixed their eyes intently on him.

They challenged him that day, senior Kueth Duany especially. They studied the 18-year-old who chose to take his scholarship to Syracuse instead of going straight from Oak Hill Academy — his high school in Mouth of Wilson, Va. — to the National Basketball Association. All skeptics, his new teammates analyzed every step, looked to see if his moves measured up to his hype.

The Orangemen played for an hour. Afterward, Duany went straight to assistant coach Troy Weaver’s office and said, “Coach, we’re going to be good this year. You guys were right. He’s even better than the press clippings.”

When Anthony showed up to play pick-up the next day, his teammates called him “Franchise” and “The Chosen One.” He’s gone by those nicknames ever since.

“Melo, man? You still there.”

“Yeah, still here.”

“How’s the team, Melo. You all still kickin’?”

The team is, in fact, the best thing he’s got going. When he came to Syracuse, he confided in his closest friends that he was worried he wouldn’t fit in.

It took just one day on campus for him to find his crew. He drove to Syracuse with Frazier and his mother, Mary, on Aug. 24. He moved in with roommate Billy Edelin, met up with teammate Hakim Warrick and toured the campus. That night, the group went to Konrad’s.

Since then, he’s spent almost all his time with teammates Edelin, Warrick, Josh Pace and walk-on Andrew Kouwe. Sure, things hadn’t been perfect at first. He told friends that he didn’t get along with center Jeremy McNeil. And sometimes, when he was eating at Goldstein Student Center with the crew, he jumped on his cell phone to distance himself.

But before long, he felt at home. A few times while at Konrad’s, the crew saved him, took him away from girls, stopped him from making a risky decision. He found friends — good ones. And the people who watched over him couldn’t have been happier. Weaver, the assistant coach, told people, “That may be the most important thing for him. He fell into a great group of friends. That was huge for his transition.”

“Yeah, of course things are still good, man. You know we tight.”

“Yeah, just checkin’ up. Life still treating you good?”

Better than ever. He’s the hottest bachelor on campus: good-looking, always smiling and a probable lottery pick if he makes himself eligible for next year’s NBA Draft. A few times, he’s called friends from Konrad’s.

“I’m dancing with five girls,” he’s said. “This is crazy. I love it.”

A part of him always has loved the superstar role. He works hard during the day and goes out at night. He flirts with temptation but makes the right choices. Even Steve Smith, his coach at Oak Hill, knows him well enough to say, “I’ve never known him to have a girlfriend. But he always seems to have a few girls. Still, he walks that line well enough, makes the right decision enough to never get in trouble.”

He’ll call close friend Justin Gray — an Oak Hill teammate who’s now a freshman basketball player at Wake Forest — and they’ll talk about their problems. Gray will tell him, “Melo, I know you don’t have a girlfriend. But that doesn’t mean you can have a bunch of ‘friends’ either. Keep watching yourself.”

He hears similar pleas from friend and Houston Rockets All-Star Steve Francis. He hears it from Frazier, too. He heeds the advice. He’s exceedingly careful about who he spends time with and who he lets close to him.

“Yeah, everything’s real good. And man, my body’s getting cut. I’m looking real good.”

“Melo, quit talking. You’re still skinny.”

He wants to talk about his chiseled upper body. He always does. It’s the only thing he’s cocky about.

Lifting weights an hour a day has paid off. It took him from scrawny to cut in two years. He loves to show off his chest, displaying the progress. He almost never wears a shirt at practice. Sometimes at parties, if he gets hot, he’ll even take off his shirt and walk around bare-chested in a crowded room with music bumping in the background.

If he tells that to Frazier, he’ll probably get lectured.

“All right, fine. But I’m telling you, I’m getting real big.”

“So what you got next?”

Next? Everything’s next. His season starts tonight at Madison Square Garden. He wants to be an All-American, the National Freshman of the Year. He wants to take the last shot in the closing seconds against Georgetown.

He will.

He wants to go out and have fun with the crew because, if he plays like he plans to, this could be his only year of college.

Next are expectations so big he tells his closest friends he doesn’t want to think about them. Next is bulking up his chest so he can show it off some more. Next is finding a girlfriend or, more likely, another girl. Next is a year filled with promise and pressure, with elation and expectation.

“Next, I’m about to take a test. I’m in class and the teacher’s passing one out.”

“You’ve been in class this whole time?”

“Yeah, but it’s a big lecture, so I don’t think anyone really notices me.”

Published on November 13, 2002 at 12:00 pm