19 ppg to be original.... but honestly.. that's what I was thinking then I read all the 19ppg replies. We must be onto something.
updated in green Spoiler 1. when will melo land in houston / what airline? 2. melo officially signs 3. melo's press conference scheduled for X day/time 4. media conspiracy / negative or not enough national coverage of melo's signing 5. does he even own a banana boat? 6. pictures of melo shopping and dining around houston 7. in what neighborhood will he buy a house? / he bought a house in X neighborhood 8. why hasn't he been seen with harden / cp3 / are they not really friends? 9. will lala move to houston? how will this effect his mood in the locker room and on court production? 10. is he becoming a locker room cancer? (this thread must be started before training camp begins) 11. why are there no videos of his passing to harden? 12. media day thread for melo specifically. 13. training camp videos: does melo look fat? 14. how many minutes will melo play in the first preseason game? (poll) 15. was signing melo a bad idea? (this thread must be posted after his first poor shooting game) 16. i have GROWN to HATE melo (this one was too easy) 17. does melo still hate MDA? 18. should melo be the #1 option? (this thread must be posted after his first hot shooting game) 19. melo and harden cannot play together (must post this thread after the first loss of the season) 20. is melo making us worse? (best time to post this is preseason) 21. is melo or capela our 3rd star? 22. my cousin's friend met melo at the galleria 23. is melo the new J.Lin? 24. can we afford to resign melo next summer? (this must be posted before training camp) 25. advanced stats prove james ennis should replace melo in the rotation (must be posted after the first preseason game) 26. predict melo's minutes/stats should we have some sort of celebration when we make it through the list? maybe a prize for whoever starts the last thread left on the list?
melo never averaged less than 20ppg or 34mpg before last year with the thunder. i expect him to play between 24-30mpg here. that would leave him with about 14-18ppg. if we use his stats from last year when for the first time he was a 3rd option, he averaged 16ppg in 32mpg. of course he might not have been engaged there, and run makes teammates worse, etc, etc, but melo's numbers aren't going to get better with age and he's not gonna play 32mpg here. using the same range (24-30) based on last year's numbers he should average 12-15ppg. total range should be 12-18ppg. using the average guess of 27mpg, his range shortens to 14-16ppg. so i'll guess on the low end to account for age and the fact that we might add another starting F and put him on the bench (keeping his minutes to the low end of my predicted range). so i'll say 14ppg in 24mpg.
I think 20+ ppg. He's got Harden and CP3 passing the ball to him, instead of Westbrook. And Melo is also angling for a big contract, so you know Melo will want to get his.
If Anthony buys in and takes less long twos and changes those into threes then this is what we could possibly expect. Huge assumption though. Last season only 40% of his shots were threes... a career high. CP3 went from 38% to 47% though. This is assuming Anthony lets 55% of his FGA be 3PA. If it is lower then 50% he will be more inefficient. Anthony will be between 47.5% (CP3) and 62.7% (Gordon) when it comes to his three point rate.. Let's also guess that Anthony will take 133% of Ariza's FGA from 2018. FGA = 12.9 (Ariza's 9.7 * 133%) 3PA = 7.09 (FGA * 55%) FTA = 2.5 (OKC '18) --- 3PM = 2.5 (7.09 * 35.3) [35.3% comes from 3-year average of '16, '17, and '18] 2FGM = 2.71 (5.81 * 46.7%) [46.7% comes from 3-year average of '15, '16, and '17 assuming '18 is an outlier] FTM = 1.9 (OKC '18) --- PPG = 14.82 FGA = 12.90 PPS = 1.05 TS% = 52.9% eFG% = 50.1% FG% = 40.39% 3P% = 35.3% FT% = 76% Just my guess what his floor could possibly be if he doesn't decline even more. I don't think it's going to be very pretty, but as a 4th or 5th option it won't be too bad. edit: It just occurred to me that his FG% from inside the arc may be better than 46.7 due to the removal of long range twos. So that is promising. His career high from inside the arc is 50.9 back in 2008, so idk.
How many minutes are people projecting him to play? His last 3 seasons with NY, he put up 23.3 pts/36 as a first option. That scoring rate equates to 18.1 ppg in 28 mpg. I'm under the assumption that this is the range of minutes he will be playing, and even giving him a slight efficiency bump, but then a decrease in scoring attempts based on being a lower option, I would be more inclined to think something like 16 ppg.