How the Anthony Family Tree Connects Two NBA Guards
The relationship between Cole Anthony and Carmelo Anthony is one of those family connection stories that comes up constantly in casual basketball conversations, usually right after someone notices the shared last name and assumes the obvious. They're not father and son. They're not even close in the way people often picture. Carmelo is actually Cole's first cousin once removed, which means the link runs through Cole's dad, Randy Anthony. Randy and Carmelo share the same grandparents on their mother's side, making them cousins. The basketball angle is just the part people remember. Understanding how these two connects requires looking at the family structure first, then tracing how each ended up in the league through different paths. Randy Anthony was a college basketball player at St. John's in the 1990s before moving into coaching and scouting. That middle generation is the actual bridge. Carmelo grew up in the spotlight because of his own trajectory, but the family closeness with Randy meant Cole had access to that environment from childhood without the pressure of a famous father directly guiding his development. What I found useful when trying to map this out accurately was going through genealogy databases and cross-referencing with basketball reference profiles, because the cousin-once-removed relationship doesn't jump out from any single interview. People casually call them cousins, which is technically wrong and causes confusion whenever you try to use it in a serious piece. The correct framing is that Carmelo is Cole's first cousin once removed, or equivalently, they are second cousins. I initially wrote the wrong relationship in a draft and had to go back and fix it after a reader pointed it out, so double-check your genealogy terminology before publishing anything on this.
Cole Anthony was selected second overall by the Orlando Magic in 2020 after one season at North Carolina. Carmelo Anthony was third overall by the Denver Nuggets in 2003 after one season at Syracuse. Both were high-profile lottery picks coming out of college, which is probably the strongest basketball parallel beyond the family tie. Cole has cited Carmelo as an influence at times, and they've appeared together publicly, but their playing styles and career trajectories diverged significantly after the draft. One practical detail that matters if you're researching this topic: Carmelo Anthony's mother is Delroy Anthony, and Randy Anthony's wife (Cole's mother) is LaTanya Anthony. The sisters are married to the brothers, which is how the family structure works. It sounds tangled but it's just standard cousin genetics. If you try to explain it verbally to someone without writing it down, it gets confusing fast. Writing out the actual connections between Delroy, Randy, and the Anthony family line clears it up in about thirty seconds. There is no public record of Carmelo being directly involved in Cole's development or recruitment process, which some people assume. What existed was indirect exposure. Cole watched Carmelo's career from the stands and in highlights during his formative years. That's different from mentorship or formal guidance. When Cole entered the draft, Carmelo was already well established in Denver and later in his career across multiple teams, so their professional paths overlapped but didn't intersect operationally.
If you're building a family tree or writing about this connection, here's a structure that works cleanly: start with the shared grandparents, move to the sibling pair (Delroy and Randy's parent), then branch to Carmelo on one side and Randy plus Cole on the other. This avoids the common mistake of implying a direct parent-child relationship that doesn't exist. I've seen several articles get this wrong, including one from a decent-sized sports outlet that ran the error for two days before being corrected. The overlap in their NBA careers created moments of natural storylines. Cole and Carmelo were both in the league simultaneously from 2020 onward, which gave media outlets a reason to keep returning to the family angle. It's a valid storyline but it should be presented accurately. They share a last name and a general basketball lineage, but they are not the same generation of players and they don't share the same direct mentorship dynamic that relationships typically carry in basketball narratives. For anyone looking to verify these details independently, NBA.com player profiles, basketball-reference pages, and basic genealogy platforms like Ancestry or even free sources like FamilySearch will show the relationship if you know which branches to look at. The key search terms are Randy Anthony, Delroy Anthony, and the Anthony family lineage through New York. Carmelo's early career coverage at Syracuse also indirectly confirms the family connection since his profile consistently references the Anthony family basketball background.
Get the Full Details
The main limitation of relying on public information here is that the Anthony family tends to keep personal details private, so the verified connections come mostly from the basketball side rather than from family statements. This means there are gaps in the publicly available record about the exact nature of their personal relationship outside of basketball. What we know for certain is the family tree structure and the professional overlap. Everything else is inference or speculation, and it's better to label it as such.
