I.D.I.O.T @Snow Villiers @Shaq2Yao Spoiler Stephen A.: I believe he is. I believe DWade is right. That is not to say Carmelo Anthony is completely blameless. He's not what he used to be. Whether he can get that back remains to be seen but we all highly doubt it. Father time is undefeated and the fact is this is not an idividual who has taken care of himself physically to the degree that LeBron James & others have. He doesn't have the same lift, not shooting with the same degree of accuracy and his legs are fading from him before our very eyes. Having said all that, this is team that won 65 games. Don't tell me Carmelo Anthony is the cause of their struggles. Losing Trevor Ariza & Luc Mbah a Moute is a factor. Various people over the weekend kept saying this: they brought up Stephon Marbury and what life was like Phoenix and how Mike D'Antoni held grudges. This is what they're saying. I'm not saying this because I don't know Mike D'Antoni to be that guy. They believe there is still fallout from the years in New York City. He came to Houston because of CP3. CP3 is his man. That & a decent relationship with James Harden would protect & insulate him from the coach that was Mike D'Antoni. There is where you get DWade coming out. They're alluding to D'Antoni to some degree. Here's where I will point the finger at D'Antoni. That man is about offense. We can speculate whether he's holding grudges or not and all that. I can't know that. I haven't spoken to Mike D'Antoni. Even if I spoke to him, would you expect him to admit it? I can tell you he cannot deny: he doesn't give a damn about defense. He never has. That was Jeff Bzdelik's job. You didn't just lose Ariza & Mbah a Moute, you lost Bzdelik. Now after abruptly retiring, he's coming back after Thanksgiving. If you lost two defensive players and lost your defensive coordinator and the person overseeing it is a guy whose reputation is he doesn't give a damn about defense, what do you think will happen? What will happen is what we've seen. It's more about personnel changes -- who they lost -- the head coach they retained and the defensive coordinator they lost. That's the problem here. Max: Is Carmelo Anthony being scapegoated? No. Carmelo Anthony isn't good. He hasn't been good for awhile. At a certain point, you can't keep saying it's this situation and it's that situation. How perfect does a situation need to be for Carmelo to ball? It wasn't in New York, it wasn't in OKC and now it's not in Houston. ... The real missed opportunity for Carmelo was when D'Antoni was coaching & Jeremy Lin was balling out. That was his chance to adapt to the way the league was going. He came back & took control of the offense again and now in his dissipated state physically, not so easy. I see him trying to do the right thing now. I see him thinking the game but it's not muscle memory. He has to think it through and at his age/speed, it's too late. The time was then in New York with Jeremy Lin. He missed that window. He slid because he got older & the league was changing away from his style of play. He goes to OKC. OKC is not as good. They get rid of him. They get better, especially defensively. He goes to the Rockets. They're no good. They're not very good with him or without him but they're worse with him than without him. They are minus 11 points per 100 possessions with him than without him. That's terrible. You're taking a mediocre team and making them much, much worse. You can't keep making excuses for Carmelo Anthony. People can't keep making excuses for Carmelo Anthony. (@Carl Herrera) There's Carmelo then there's Tilman Fertitta. He doesn't want to pay luxury tax. Why is Carmelo really on the team? You have to pay Luc & Trevor Ariza and you'll have to pay luxury tax. They didn't want to do it because they knew they had to pay Chris Paul, James Harden & Clint Capela and they're basically saying, 'We're giving you all this money, the three of you better get it done along with PJ Tucker because we're not paying luxury tax.' That's the issue. Is Carmelo more to blame than the owner? No. The owner is more to blame than Carmelo but Carmelo isn't good anymore. SAS: No one is saying Carmelo is blameless. I believe in shooters. ... If you can shoot, you got a chance. Now you're talking about what you're pairing him with. That could have been offset. What he's bringing (making shots), if you play defense & have the personnel & keep Ariza and make sure Jeff Bzdelik doesn't leave, Ariza with Carmelo, I don't think we'd be having this conversation. Max: You are making excuses for Carmelo. The Thunder were worse with him, better without him. Both before, they were better. He gets there, they're worse. He leaves, they're better. Rockets were better. He gets there, they're worse. Knicks weren't good with him at the end. I want to get back to Carmelo and the way shooters age. On the surface, it looks right. For athletic guys, when athleticism goes, what do they fall back on? The skills guys, they have those skills to fall back on. Bill James wrote about this at one point. Classic old man skills. If you get to the league and you already do what the veteran players do but don't have a ton of athletic ability, you already are where the other players evolve to. When you start to lose athletic ability, you got nowhere to go. A more athletic player can try to develop parts of his game as his athletic ability goes. Take Shawn Kemp. SAS: You're not teaching anyone basketball here.
Its 40% Rockets team struggles, 60% Carmelo at personal career crossroads. If Rockets start 9-3 / 8-4, not much issue. Narrative is Carmelo is contributing to a winner. Rockets sucking out the gate, its bad for everyone but extra bad on Carmelo. Both public opinion that he's not a winner, and bruise to his own ego he's not a star or even contributor. I think he realizes that too. But ultimately he's not patient or deferential enough to ride it out as 7th-9th guy especially this late in his career. Its just not mutual
All this is narrative until I get a definitive source inside the Rockets All the external crap is chatter Rocket River
I don't agree that he is a chemistry issue. By all accounts he's been a good teammate both here and his other stops. The only "chemistry" issue is coming from the fact that he can't play over other guys and that creates an elephant in the room to be dealt with.
Does chemistry cause you to miss dead to right shots, bunnies, layups and free throws? I don't think so.
Scapegoat how? Haven’t seen a single rocket player or team rep say one single thing bad about him. This appears to be Melos choice. He can’t except Clark playing in front of him. This was a low risk high reward move that has come to an end because Melo is being outplayed by an unstaffed rookie and can’t except it. I don’t get the scapegoat crap.
It’s funny how the media annihilates Melo at every turn until he ends up on the Rockets, and now he’s a sympathetic figure. They really hate us lmaooo
We still don't know much about who is blowing smoke and who is not. Everyone is just doubling down on whatever opinion they had before Woj got everyone riled up.
I will cut Melo ONE bit of slack: Finding out he's playing behind an undrafted rookie must have been humiliating. Like getting hit with a ton of bricks. The last thing he expected after coming here was not being in the regular rotation and possibly dealing with DNPs. This is what made him a risk. Melo lovers continually argued there was NO risk. Some of us tried to explain otherwise. Morey really messed up by thinking Melo was greater than or equal to Ariza/Luc. That may be the real story here. I expected him to fail as a Rocket and am sorry to be right.
We don't have any report that he is whining. Basically it sounds like the team was proactive and told him he wouldn't get to play regularly going forward and asked him what he wanted to do. He is taking time to figure that out. I'm amazed at the backlash because all of the reports make it sound pretty amicable.
The fact is, this is a new system for Melo, Ennis, Clark, MCW. New habits have to be created. Old habits have to be recognized and corrected. Communication has to get better. The talent is all there. Switching defense is all about communication. Players get caught guarding 2 on the weak side no one rotates.
Yes. I have been saying this from the beginning, Melo was a loser, but the rockets thought he would be ok for this team. Now the team sucks, you wants let Melo go, clearly he is not an major problem at his salary, his performance is just ok as his last year, he did not cause the team to be a losing record.
