Would the Rockets be this good right now if we had Carmelo over Anderson?

doesnt really matter to me lol. the rockets are playing great basketball as expected without melo

melo isn't here and as of now and after seeing melo in okc im actually glad he isn't. he hasn't changed one bit.

 

Not sure how you came to this conclusion. He was the Knicks' best player last year and they were far from making the playoffs. Granted, the Knicks didn't have a lot of good shooters. But look at them this year. The Knicks lost Melo and they turned the offensive rein to Porzingis. They are right there in the playoffs picture in a much more competitive East than last season.

 

all due respect, Melo just has the kind of character that makes his team worse, he can score, but anywhere he goes, he makes your team worse, i don't know if it is his bad defense, or bad choice on offense, or he just is not a team player, watched him from the denver days , when he is actually making some positive impacts, he has definitely becomes one of the players who scores points, but somehow makes your team worse as a whole, you don't see this kind of players often, but it is what it is.

 

I was in for Olympic Carmelo bombing 3s on fools...

But right now, I'm here to praise Ryan Anderson. RA who clearly heard the talk and has responded by coming in leaner, putting in effort on defense and rebounds and still being a deadly stretch 4. RA who wouldn't have the ego Regular Melo or Olympic Melo would have. RA who both makes the system go and benefits from it. In the best of scenarios, Carmelo would've made this team incrementally better than it is now. RA made this team better bringing his skill set last year. He made it better this year with selflessness and dedication. Can't ask for more than that.

 

Totally agree!

 

Some great players' games are not very synergistic by their nature. Players like Iverson and Westbrook, and lesser talents like Francis and Gay, thrive when they are the only offensive threat of the team. When playing with other good to great offensive players on the same team, they still produce similar offense statistically but does not make the overall team offense any better. I believe Melo is this kind of player.

 

I'm looking at the teams that did make the bottom of the playoffs and thinking that if you swapped out Melo for their best offensive player, would they still be a playoff team, or at least be fighting for a playoff spot? Look at Melo's production vs Millsap's. I find it hard to believe that there is such a major drop off that Atlanta isn't at the very least contending for a playoff spot.

I'm pretty clear here that Melo alone isn't making your team a contender. And I was pretty clear that "with the right role players" I believe its possible for a team to make the playoffs, or at least compete for the playoffs.

I feel like people aren't catching on here that while I'm giving Melo props for still being an offensively productive this late in his career, I'm in no way advocating that this is something any team should shoot for as a "championship formula".

A starting lineup of .... lets say (hypothetically)-

-Jeff Teague
-JJ Reddick
-Melo
-Patrick Patterson
-Steven Adams

Can be very Melo-centric offensively and have him score 25 PPG as their star offensive player at this stage of his career, and still be a competent NBA team who "could" potentially make the playoffs in the East, and maybe even the West.

Lets also keep in mind that our very own Rockets had a team for years where the best offensive player was Kevin Martin and/or Kyle Lowry where they were still competing for a playoff spot. I'm not sure why this idea is so incredibly controversial around here with the history we have here in Houston with this issue.

 

LOL!!!!!

 

I can't say what your saying is inaccurate. My belief is he would be motivated alongside the leadership of CP3 and his playmaking ability. He would be in a very defined role on this team and be able to matchup with the Draymond Green's and LaMarcus Aldridge's of the world's. But it could also go the other way and be a bad fit. Very possible.

 

Every person who advocated for the Melo trade this summer knows very little about basketball and should feel like a fool.

 

OK, I kind of get what you say. Melo as the best player "with the right mix of role players" can be a playoffs team. I can buy that.

BUT, Melo as the best player with a guy as good as Porzingis was 10 games out of the playoffs in a weak East. That's exactly what some of us have been saying. The question is not whether Melo is a better offensive player than Ryan Anderson, nobody in the right mind would say no. It's about whether the Rockets are the "right mix" for Melo to fit in. If he doesn't fit, then he not only would not make the team better, he could conceivably even make it worse. The Knicks got better after he was gone. It just shows that just because a player is a great scorer on his own does not necessarily make a team better just by throw him in the mix.

I think we should have learned the lesson from the Dwight mess. Even now at this age, you can still argue that Dwight is a better individual player than Capela. But very few, if any, fans here would trade Capela for Dwight, and it's not just about Capela's potential.

 

LOL. So Morey, CP3, Harden, and MDA are all fools and don't know anything about basketball?

 

That wouldn't be the situation here.

Hindsight is 20/20. At the time, you acquire Dwight as a free agent 100/100 times.

In this situation, Morey, CP3, Harden, and MDA are all on board for trading for Melo. You just have to assume they had a lot of behind the scenes talks, especially Melo and CP3.

Let's be honest... if Anderson was slumping now then this thread would be about Anderson's "bloated contract" like most of the Anderson threads last season or this summer....

 

Well we can agree on the bolded!

 

Maybe we can use lower price to sign him this next year. I prefer to sign Michael Beasley

 

Melo is laughably bad defensively this season. His VORP is literally 0 and his defensive win share is negative - literally the worst of his career. Also this year he is a very high volume low efficiency offensive player - almost allen iverson style. Going to take him some time to mesh but we would have lost a lot of games early on with Melo.

 

Is this really much better than the Knicks teams he hasn't led to the playoffs as their star player? I think Melo has one of the most impressive offensive skillsets in history but he has rarely used it wisely. The last few years his performance has been very unimpressive. While he still would demonstrate all of the same skills, very rarely was it all on the same night and even more rare was the night where he would make smart, efficient decisions.

I absolutely think he can still be a 25 ppg guy, but I think if he is your 25 ppg guy as your offensive star then your offense is probably bad. He takes too many shots to get there, his style discourages ball movement and in the lineup you just laid out they would be dreadful on defense. You compared him to Millsap, and while he is surely a more skilled offensive player than Millsap, it's only amounted to a better offensive rating for Melo ONCE out of the last 8 years compared to Millsap.

The whole idea of Melo being a good piece here was basically that he wouldn't play anything like he's played in the NBA. No shot if he's on a team of role players that he would convert to that (hell he hasn't done it on a team with stars).

So no, at this point I don't believe Melo can be the star of a team that competes for the playoffs. Definitely not in the West but probably not in the East either.

 

James Harden has led teams of role players to the playoffs. Carmelo Anthony NEVER has. Hell, even his Nuggets teams he was never the best player on those teams according to advanced metrics. His superior offensive skills have just never translated to being the offensive monster that someone like Harden is. Billups was better in Denver by the metrics. Melo would show all the skills and he would score a bunch of points, but he would then and still does blow a lot of possessions by just jacking up shots and refusing to involve the guys around him.

 

Woa! This dude is a bad ass!!! Wow!!!