The Truth About Carmelo Anthony

[NYKnicksAllDay]

The truth about Melo is either you love him or hate him no inbetween. Sorry for the haters Melo fixing to shut everyone up...

Not true. I'm right in the middle. Don't love him, don't hate him.

[NYY 26 to 7]

I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall. Did you guys even read the stuff I wrote? The blind love is unreal.

So your point was to show that he has holes in his game? Ok who doesn't?

I appreciate stats but they don't tell the whole story - especially in basketball where advanced stats are very new and hardly well rounded or as strong as those in baseball. It is too hard to control for all the confounding factors in basketball. +/- is also the most garbage stat you can throw out there for an individual - if you are trying to represent how a certain lineup works together then it is a bit more useful. The other problem is your selective in what years you put out there - acknowledging that this was Melo's worst season and plagued with injuries. Then throw out a couple other years with no comparison group - if your going to spend the time then go all the way. There have been many statisticians - including some of the foremost authorities in baseball stats who reject the strength of advanced basketball stats.

My other problem with this is the non statistcal assumptions you make. Isolation is absolutely not supposed to be 4 guys standing around and limiting movement. Isolation can be used to draw double teams andf if you have cutters and weak side screens and player movement it can be very effective for the whole team. The NBA is all about isolation - getting match ups and isolating scorers on favorable match ups to take advantage - it can be through a post up or using a p&r to isolate a favorable matchup. One of the Knicks biggest problems through the D'Antoni era was too little movement away from the ball. Other teams like the Heat thrive on hitting cutters - some times running 3 guys through the lane one after the other to pull defenders in an iso situation. You need to set up these opportunities which we show at times but not with any consistency. This away from the ball movement lead to much of our success at the end of the year. Guys like Lin and Nash used D'Anotni's system by dominating the ball and getting favorable matchups penetrating the lane and making plays - the rest of the team just spotting up. That is not our personel and we were an awful 3 point shooting team. If you watched the playoffs you saw fast breaks and isolation in the half court.

Look if your standard is LeBrons efficiency and stats you will never be happy with anyone the Knicks have. You also say that you will accept Kobe's arrogance and inefficiency because he is a champion - like prime Shaq, Pau, and Bynum had nothing to do with it. Melo has not played with anyone close to Shaq (few have) and I'm still going to be patient about the Amar'e and Melo pairing before writing it off as a failure and comparing it to Pau/Bynum.

[TeamMelo15]

The stats are right Melo is #10-15 in the league byt those standards. I got no problem with that at all. That still puts him as having a spot on the all-star team so no harm done. He can only get better but he does have a few things to work on like moving without the ball, shot efficiency and of course defense.

[cheetos185]

Not to mention he hasnt played with a 2010 stat yet ..anybody here thinks lebron carries same team to finals with Jr and novak as his 2nd best scorers

[NYKnicksAllDay]

Question for you guys who know more about advanced stats. What is a good TS%? Average? Below average?

[AIMelo=KillaDUO]

No...

It's a summary of why despite his titles as Clutch and the most offensively gifted offensive player in the NBA he is his own detriment.

I know a lot don't like to solely base their beliefs on players from facts but those numbers show why Melo isn't an elite player. Why can we have discussions about what Amar'e needs to do to actually be of help to this team by rebounding and playing defense but saying Melo needs to be smarter on offense is ridiculous?

All the numbers show is why he is his own enemy and should be producing much better than he has shown.

I never said Carmelo takes the perfect shots... Because he does. He settles, I agree. But, even after all that, He's still arguably the best player on offense in the entire league, and your out your damn mind if you can't see that by watching him.

[D-Leethal]

Thank You.

Not only that. The notion he hasn't made his teammates better...how are you going to make your teammates better if they were Toney Douglas and Landry Fields, Bill Walker?

You have to actually have to have good teammates to actually make better. Melo for example made JR/Novak look great by passing it to them while they made a ridiculous amount of three pointers. Melo got a Triple Double, that was possible because he was playing with efficient players that night.

If you do not have good solid players that can shoot in some way shape or form, you cannot make anyone better.

Stats like that in general should be 70% taken for and also 30% put in perspective.

He's played with nothing but trash besides Amare/Billups in the first 25 games with the Knicks. He played with a trash backcourt last season among other things.

If anything, his stats from 2004 - 2010 is what should be used for example. Not last season.

See Punk you are obviously one of those super-homers that will refuse to acknowledge the deficiencies in his game.

No, Melo has not shown the ability to thrive while his teammates thrive. It hasn't happened. When did Fields game go to ****? When did Amare get noticablely worse?

When did we shown our best team oriented stretch of games? There were two of them, one Melo was out, the other Melo averaged 12 ppg on 40% shooting and was an after thought. When did Melo have his best stretch of games? When the whole team went down, he got touches every single time down the floor, took 20+ shots a game and was a one-man team to lead us to the playoffs.

We haven't seen THAT Melo, with THAT type of team ball. Its been one of the other, and its been instant the way his presence changed things multiple times, for better or for worse.

When Melo first came, Amare still had some dominant offensive performances but they slowly but surely dissappeared to near-scrub level the more and more Melo became 'the guy' and took the reigns of the team.

The only game you bring up is when Novak and JR had their best shooting night of the season and Melo was in the midst of his hottest streak in years. Melo's game, thus far, has turned his teammates into stand still jump shooters. Novak and JR are the only guys who played well in that type of game. Everyone who didn't thrive in that type of game got worse and worse the more they played with Melo.

Nobody has figured out how to play with him offensively unless they are a stand still jump shooter. Open your eyes bruh. I'm not saying its not possible but it hasn't happened.

He doesn't uplift the play of his teammates unless they are standing still 'watching like they are at the theater' waiting for kickouts. Thats what Melo's game breeds. Its up to him and his teammates to fix that. I am hopeful these Olympics will be fresh in his memory and he focuses on doing the little things like coach K has asked him to do and lets his offensive dominance come naturally, not go in with the mentality you have to dominate every night and let whether or not the shots are falling dictate how you play the rest of the game.

Take the homer glasses off for once in your life, your just proving this thread right, there are some here who will go to the grave before critiquing part of Melo's game.

[elledaddy]

So if advance stats say Melo is an elite/efficient offensive machine we can simply disregard it because its for Geeks?

Im sayin why do we need advance stats at all now if we actually watch the dam game? Me personally, Ive been watching basketball since 1984 and I dont care about advanced stats. So whether those support or discredits a player, I could care less because I can just watch that player play. So you're telling me that if somebody researched and found out that according to " advanced stats" that Jeff Hornacek was a more " efficient" player than Jordan than that would change you're opinion of Jordan? The truth is, if you actually watch Melo play and you think that Blake Griffin is a better scorer then you dont need advance stats. You can do it your way and I'll just keep watching with my eyes

[Blitzace137]

It's simple to me like Kash said Melo plays like he's Kobe or Jordan except he's not nearly as good as them. Kobe has perfected his offensive craft his post move. Kobe plays at a 110% every game and hates losing. Melo thinks IMO his way is the best way. Which is throw me the ball and if I get doubled be ready to shoot. This is why teammates struggle to play with him. Only players that can succeed playing with Melo are robots spot up shooters.

There is very little ball movement. He does pass but there is now flow to his game which made it harder for guys like Stat, Fields, Chandler.

Melo game is similar to that of Kobe and Jordan but he doesn't have the hunger to win like them and he just is not as good as them.

[D-Leethal]

He's a Power Forward. His skillset is really built to be a player who is quicker than an average Power Forward but stronger than a Small Forward. He's still the 3rd best scorer in the NBA. When he's on his game, nobody can stop him.

He is clearly our best player but can we stop acting like he's supposed to win it all on himself?



Those are totally false and you know this.

Punk I challenge you to put your extreme homerism aside and please expain the positives and negatives of Melo's game.

[NYY 26 to 7]

It's simple to me like Kash said Melo plays like he's Kobe or Jordan except he's not nearly as good as them. Kobe has perfected his offensive craft his post move. Kobe plays at a 110% every game and hates losing. Melo thinks IMO his way is the best way. Which is throw me the ball and if I get doubled be ready to shoot. This is why teammates struggle to play with him. Only players that can succeed playing with Melo are robots spot up shooters.

There is very little ball movement. He does pass but there is now flow to his game which made it harder for guys like Stat, Fields, Chandler.

Melo game is similar to that of Kobe and Jordan but he doesn't have the hunger to win like them and he just is not as good as them.

Stat has never thrived outside of being the number 1 option and a connection with a pg on the p&r which we didn't have. And when Lin was playing well they left amare on the wing and ran it with chandler.

Also when he has prime shaq you can compare Kobe.

[Cidd BlazeNYK90]

First of all meli always has the hunger to win,
And are you ppk forgetting that lebum james was
Also an iso player ?
He always averaged assists because his team
Moved without the ball all the time !
In Denver melo averaged enough assists to
beat lebum james every meeting when he
Was in cleaveland, so stop the nonsense plz
carmelo has a cast that can move without the ball
finally, so you will see more assists from him
kobe was being called the same thing when
his team sucked and was chucking for a living
Then he asked to be traded, and what happened ?
The lakers put a better team around him so that
they can stay relevant.
So stop hating on melo for doing what every star does
when you need to check the players just standing
around, and if you ask me, melo never said just stand there
they chose to, why ? Because that's all they know at the moment
So your welcome adv stats

[elledaddy]

It's simple to me like Kash said Melo plays like he's Kobe or Jordan except he's not nearly as good as them. Kobe has perfected his offensive craft his post move. Kobe plays at a 110% every game and hates losing. Melo thinks IMO his way is the best way. Which is throw me the ball and if I get doubled be ready to shoot. This is why teammates struggle to play with him. Only players that can succeed playing with Melo are robots spot up shooters.

There is very little ball movement. He does pass but there is now flow to his game which made it harder for guys like Stat, Fields, Chandler

Melo game is similar to that of Kobe and Jordan but he doesn't have the hunger to win like them and he just is not as good as them.

Im curious, what robot spot up shooters are you talking about? Im serious, name five of them b/cuz here are the top scorers on Melo's teams since he came into the league.......

Iverson
Billups
JR Smith
NeNe
KMart
Stats
A Miller
M Camby
E Boykins
J Lin
Voshon Leonard ( The only robot spot up shooter)

So who are these spot up robots you talkin about? Leonard and Novak?

[D-Leethal]

First of all meli always has the hunger to win,
And are you ppk forgetting that lebum james was
Also an iso player ?
He always averaged assists because his team
Moved without the ball all the time !
In Denver melo averaged enough assists to
beat lebum james every meeting when he
Was in cleaveland, so stop the nonsense plz
carmelo has a cast that can move without the ball
finally, so you will see more assists from him
kobe was being called the same thing when
his team sucked and was chucking for a living
Then he asked to be traded, and what happened ?
The lakers put a better team around him so that
they can stay relevant.
So stop hating on melo for doing what every star does
when you need to check the players just standing
around, and if you ask me, melo never said just stand there
they chose to, why ? Because that's all they know at the moment
So your welcome adv stats

Melo's game breeds the standing around. Quick passes, quick movement, quick decision making breeds ball and body movement. Melo's game is the antithesis of this. He likes to size his man up 1 on 1, he likes to post up, face up, jab step, dribble before making decision.

That puts his teammates in a tough position because they have no idea what Melo is gonna do, 1 dribble pull up? Drive and finish? Drive and kick? His offense isn't easy to read which is what also makes him so good, he can pull his hesitate dribble and you cut weakside thinking he'll take his patented dribble pull up, than all of a sudden he uses his quickness to take his man off the dribble and hes running into a crowded paint because you cut weakside. That happened with Fields 100s of times.

The guys who like to move without the ball don't seem to know how to do so effectively with a guy like Melo. Its similar to the way Allen Iverson played the game, he played his best ball when the entire offense revolved around his iso's and you surround him with strictly spot shooters.

Off the ball movement is a product of quick decision making. Standing still and watching like your at the theater is a product of isolation basketballl.

For everyone who throws stats out the window and wants to play the 'I watch the games card', its pretty obvious to anyone who watched the games that in the last 2 years the ball movement was at its best before Melo came, when Melo got hurt, and when Melo wasn't a major part of the offense (Woodsanity).

The same way its not easy to play with Kobe, its not easy to play with Melo. Its not a knock on them as players or winners, it doesn't make them selfish per-se, but their games may come off as selfish at times and they both had their fair share of run-ins with their coaches because of their style of play.

[THE MTL]

I personaly hate advanced statistics because they can be shewed in so many ways.