If you listen carefully, Harden isn't that excited about having Melo. Heck he wasn't that excited about having LeBron. He thought last season's team was great and he didn't want to mess with it. Of course last season's team was no more. Two rotation players are gone. So we have to retool. Does Morey want Melo so badly? I don't know. Signing him to a one-year vet min instead of the MLE and/or a longer deal tells me that Morey is cautious. This is not like 2014. In fact, Morey was not willing to give up anything other than Ryno's fat contract a year ago to get Melo from the Knicks. I think it is mostly CP3 who REALLY wants Melo to come.
Melo is making 28M already he has no reason to sign for more. Harden almost basically said he didn’t want LeBron. You get the opposite feeling with Melo. But I get it man, spin it in a way that allows you to handle the reality of it all. I’ve been there before with Phil Jackson.
I think Tucker is the guy now. No one can replace Anderson's 3pt shooting (before he stopped wanting to shoot), not Tucker, not Melo. But 40% 3pt shooters don't grow on trees. So that's that. Melo would fill Anderson's role only if he started at the 4 and Tucker came off the bench. This is still possible if Morey can get a starting 3 to replace Ariza's role. I agree with those who say that Ennis replaces Moute, not Ariza. But I am hoping that he will mature into a good starter. TBH, I have more hope that this will happen than Melo filling the Anderson role.
If you had 28M, and someone was willing to give you either 2M or 5M more, which deal would you take? If Morey was sure about Melo, he would have tried to sign him to a longer deal. In fact, some posters here believe that one year is not good. Melo will be unrestricted next year and if he does well, he will demand a bunch more, way more than the MLE. So Morey had reasons to offer longer and more money to lock Melo up if he was sure about Melo working out here. Also, why wasn't Morey willing to give up more last year to trade for Melo? If Morey didn't think adding Melo was that important last year, Melo's stock has dropped even more this year after the OKC stint.
5M but there’s a difference and you know that. Morey needed the MLE to make other moves, Melo is already making his bread. No need to be greedy. Can’t recall too many cases where guys double dipped at that rate.
BTW, why would I spin it to make myself feel bad about a Rockets player? I don't care about Melo. I care about the Rockets. I hope Melo does well as a Rocket and not messes up the team. That's the difference between a team fan and a player fan. You are clearly a player fan, not a team fan. That's okay. But you may not understand how a rabid fan of a team for more than three decades feels. Don't think that we want to attack Melo just for fun so you need to defend him like he is a poor victim of some evil Clutchfans posters. Some of us just have doubt how much he can help the TEAM.
Ill answer...i would say his offensive versatility. In his prime this man had no weeknesses on o. Could hit off the dribble. Post up. 3 elbows, jab steps. Like he had everything wrong harden is excited but u cant just go overboard until its official. Dont say fake narratives. U not gonna hype it all up just in caseu dont sign him
I will defend Melo to the depths of the Earth. But no all jokes aside I think some of you are on edge over this. Idk if its because you were so close to that title last year and I understand, I remember my Jets going to back to back AFCCG and then the bottom falling out and it's taken us years to recover so I get it. I'm a team fan, just not a fan of this team, per say. I'd love to see you guys win it all. However many have gone overboard with concern.
He seems to think he's still a superstar, and expects superstar treatment, and that the last 4 years have just been a series of "bad fits", and not an aging player needing to change his game up. Nobody actually gives a f**k whether he starts or not, we just hoped to have seen some outward growth from him. Just uttering the phrase "Ill do whatever they need me to do" would have been huge, even if they planned on starting him all along. So yes this mentality has us concerned that he's gonna be the same inefficient player he's been. CP3 isn't a f**king god, he can't snap his fingers and change everything, and Westbrook isn't the sole cause of his problems. If he plays the same way he has played in recent years, he will not be good for the team, and that is all we care about.
The reason why I love this, is because they said the same thing last year, and we see how that turned out.
http://bbs.clutchfans.net/index.php...ign-with-rockets.292584/page-43#post-11905151 Earlier this thread.
this is an interesting question. I remember watching the Olympics that year and Melo was fantastic. One of the reasons he shined is because he was playing PF but he was playing it as an ideal Stretch 4 that also contributed with big rebounds, got out on the break, took his man off the dribble with ease when no one else was hitting, and also hit wide open shots like they were layups. That is Olympic Melo in a nutshell. Basically he made the right play anytime he was involved in the action and was easily the true MVP of that squad.
I think the whole Olympic Melo thing is a Melo who catches the ball and makes a quick decision with it. Rarely isolates if at all and just plays off of facilitators like LeBron, Paul and Kidd. He explodes for points in bunches rather than throughout the course of a game so he'll get you say 16 points but it might be 12 points in a 4 minute stretch. In OKC his shots came very sporadically so maintaining that rhythm was very difficult. In OKC the pacing is different obviously going from FIBA to the NBA style but the difference is who's leading the charge. OKC wanted Melo to do what they brought in Patrick Patterson to do(space the floor, rebound, defend) essentially stay out of Russ way and shoot if you open but "Olympic Melo" is a Melo who gets buckets fast and is probably the best version because in those limited minutes he plays(remember FIBA is 40 minutes and almost everyone plays) Melo will light up the scoreboard. I wouldn't even call it catch and shoot Melo in OKC to be honest because of how much the offense ran through Russ/PG. So in Houston there has to be a mix of all of it. He has to space the floor similar to how he did for Russ to allow Harden specifically to work. But he should be involved in more pick n pop opportunities than OKC ran with him and I think a Melo/Paul PnP would be deadly. Last he's got to be quick with his decisions. 2 seconds and go. Either shoot it, drive and pull up, drive and finish, drive and pass and just swing it. The post ups will come off the pick n roll. So when guys say they want Olympic Melo it means 1. Not holding the ball 2. Shooting a lot of 3s 3. Points in bunches 4. High effort and intensity(he plays really hard in the Olympics)
he can't need to wait for OKC-Atlanta trade to go through first players have one week to report to their new team for physical (they will waive that for Melo) Atlanta will waive Melo after the trade is official he can sign 48 hours later
