NBA

Knicks’ Anthony leaves Baltimore better than he lived it

FOREVER INK: Anthony wears a tattoo tribute to West Baltimore on his left shoulder. (Paul J. Bereswill for The New Yo)

BALTIMORE — On his front left shoulder, Carmelo Anthony has a tattoo, ink that reads “West Baltimore.” For him, it’s an appreciation — a small appreciation — for what that city gave him.

It gave him, like in the movie, “The Bronx Tale,” his street education. It gave him his basketball understanding. And much more.

“That’s my second home,” Anthony says, before correcting himself. “I wouldn’t even say my second home. I was born here in New York. I lived here. But then I moved there when I was 9. So that was where I really learned the ins and outs of being on the streets. Just getting my street smarts. And people schooling me to the game. And just making me aware of a lot of different stuff.”

The tattoo arrived early in Anthony’s NBA career, during his first three seasons with the Nuggets.

“That’s the least I can do,” he says. “I know that I represent that and for me to put this mark on me, that was big time.”

JARRETT Jack grew up around 40 minutes away from Anthony, on a different side of town. You get the sense Jack didn’t venture to Anthony’s neighborhood much.

“You don’t really go over there unless you got some business,” Jack, now a Hornet, says. “You don’t just wander over in West Baltimore.”

You don’t do that because you might not wander back. Anthony’s family moved from New York to Baltimore when he was a kid, and they planted themselves right into a gun- and drug-infested terror zone. Across the street from Anthony’s Myrtle Avenue home were the projects, a group of four buildings called Murphy Homes. But according to Mitch Wise, one of Anthony’s old coaches, it had an alias.

“They used to call it Murder Homes,” Wise says.

“When you come from that type of neighborhood, you know the value of a dollar,” Darrell Corbett, another of Anthony’s former coaches, says. “And you know where you don’t want to go back to.”

Everyone knew. Because Darnell Hopkins, one of Anthony’s best friends growing up, says he and Anthony would steer away from trouble by playing basketball on their neighborhood court. Hopkins and Anthony would play nonstop, even after everyone else was finished. They would be the only two left.

Still shooting. Still practicing.

“[There was] just drugs, crime. All that type of stuff around there,” Hopkins says. “But the people around there knew who we were and made sure that we stayed out of trouble and stayed on that court because they didn’t want us to go down that path.”

HOPKINS said he doesn’t consider Anthony a New Yorker. Even though Anthony was born there, went to college in Syracuse and plays at the Garden.

“He’s Baltimore,” Hopkins says.

Adds Mike Daniel, Anthony’s high school coach at Towson Catholic: “Baltimore claims him. He’s Baltimore’s own. He did a lot of his growth as a person as well as a player here in Baltimore.”

In Baltimore, Anthony played ball at the Robert C. Marshall recreation center. He played ball for Mount Royal, an elementary and middle school. He played hoops in high school for three years at Towson Catholic, he and Hopkins meeting at 5:30 a.m. for a two-hour commute to school that included a pair of buses and a light rail. When their school day was over, they still had practice.

Think Anthony loved basketball growing up? His seventh-grade social studies teacher at Mount Royal, Dorothy Smith, says Fridays would include a “special activity.” Anthony’s activity was attempting to dunk. Corbett says Anthony would want to shuttle between New York and Baltimore so he could play in a basketball tournament in each city. Daniel says Anthony hated to come out of games, even if he was hurt.

Another Mount Royal social studies teacher, Barbara Collins, often would keep Anthony for detention, a punishment for whenever he showed off. Collins would make Anthony clean the blackboards, fix her desk up. They’d also chat, and Anthony would let her know someday he’d be starring as a basketball player.

“And I used to laugh,” Collins says. “I said, ‘You probably will because you love basketball.’ ”

“IT was called 77.”

That’s what Hopkins says of the court he and Anthony would play on to avoid getting into trouble. It stood on Harlem Avenue, two blocks from Anthony’s home on Myrtle. Hopkins says the courts are still there but not the rims. They have been gone for about eight years.

Anthony’s mother, Mary, moved the family to Baltimore because, as Anthony says, “My mother was trying to get out.” As it turned out, he says, there was little difference between where they came from and where they ended up. Because of that, he says, he was “already immune to the project life at 9-10 years old.”

When he moved, Anthony had no friends and didn’t know a single person.

“I had to get acclimated quick,” he says. “As a kid, all you do is be outside. Just running around and so you had to find new friends to hang out with. You had to trust people, and you had to take a lot of chances.”

Anthony’s wife, La La Vazquez, says the fact that Anthony’s family, friends, coaches and teammates all loved him so much helped ensure he didn’t fall victim to the neighborhood. And then there’s Anthony’s mother — whom Hopkins still refers to as “Miss Mary.”

John Paige, Anthony’s former physical education teacher and Pop Warner football coach, calls Mary Anthony “very strong-willed.” It was needed.

“If you didn’t have a good, nurturing influence, parenting, and if you weren’t a person that didn’t respect your elders, you could very easily go … a negative way,” Paige says. “But I think that’s what kind of basically kept him straight.”

It also helped that Anthony could play ball not only at 77 but at the Robert C. Marshall center. Wise, who ran the center and whose AAU team is now sponsored by Anthony, says one day Anthony showed up there and asked if he could play. He was a good shooter even then, though Wise says that when Anthony and Hopkins were kids, Wise thought Hopkins had the brighter future.

After playing JV at Towson Catholic as a freshman, Anthony had a monster growth spurt.

“I think at 14, Carmelo was about a little bit taller than [5-foot-7],”

Corbett says. “And Carmelo shot up at 15 to a good, what, 6-3, 6-4? He just exploded up. And the great thing about that was, [Anthony was] used to playing that guard position.”

Anthony’s guard skills translated to his forward frame. Now playing with Hopkins on varsity as a sophomore, Anthony knew not only how to play but how to motivate. If Towson was losing at halftime, Anthony would say one of two things to Hopkins — the first was “Let’s go.” That would get Hopkins geared up.

Or Anthony would make up an insult from an opposing player.

“He’d be like, ‘He said you were a bum,’ and all that,” Hopkins says. “It just elevated my game. it made me mad. He knew how to get me over that hump.”

And Anthony, even as a sophomore, was ambitious.

“[Hopkins] was the team leader. But Carmelo wanted that role,” Daniel says. “He never was a guy that wanted to wait his turn. Carmelo wanted to be a lead person. Just the way he is now.”

LA LA Vazquez says Anthony “goes back there [to Baltimore] more than anybody else I know who’s from there.” Perhaps the biggest thing he has done is donate $1.5 million to open the Carmelo Anthony Youth Development Center in 2006. According to director Valencia Warnock, the red brick building serves approximately 500 Baltimore kids starting from 5 years old and going to 21. The kids get academic assistance, receive dinner and get involved in sports and other activities.

The center has an indoor basketball court, and over the bleachers is a mural of where Anthony grew up in Baltimore, complete with a Myrtle Avenue street sign and pictures of Anthony and buildings in his community.

“I just wanted to put a mural of just the city and what that rec center stands for,” he says. “Which is the kids. Which is the neighborhood.”

mark.hale@nypost.com