After Melo had already said he wasn’t waiving his NTC. It went on for two years under Phil, trust me I was paying closer attention to it then you were. You and I both know Melo is not an Ariza replacement so to compare the two is 1. Shortsighted and 2. Almost pointless in context because it’s a ridiculous comparison. Imagine the Thunder telling Melo go shutdown the opposing teams best player or the Rockets putting Ariza on the elbow with a mismatch and tell him to get a bucket. What are we even debating? Lol it’s mindboffling and now contracts are brought up. I’m just trying to see the point of it that’s all. Neither does what the other does and honestly both should be on the team.
Clutchfans has the propensity of overrating the most trash players. It's comical. Carmelo Anthony is a better player than Ariza period. Let the rest work itself out. Ariza didn't do **** against golden state. He can't score. WHere was his vaunted defense when Kevin Durant was scoring at will?
I don't see this "Ariza was better than Melo last year" thing. How was Ariza better? What are we basing this off?
all I said was that Ariza had more of an impact towards winning and the best teams in the league would’ve rather had him than Melo last year...you’re the one who quoted me bringing up strawmans Melo is not an Ariza replacement so we have yet to replace Ariza which is the problem...we still need another wing defender, that has been the point this entire time... obviously Melo isn’t an Ariza replacement, no one ever stated otherwise
Just as a reminder. I like Ariza, but as for his importance to the team winning. We went 14-1 in the 15 games without him.
Not apples to apples, but look at Boogie. Not this offseason, but when he was with Sacramento and they were trying to get value back for him. With a year and a half on his deal left, they received a package headlined by Buddy Hield... who was underperforming his draft slot. Multiple teams basically had said don't want him under any circumstances. And this was a guy putting up 28 ppg, 11 rpg, 5 apg, 1.4 spg, and 1.3 bpg in the 55 games with Sacramento before he was trade...with a 26.5 PER, in his absolute prime/pre-prime. Again, the career year thing is a bit misleading. Principally, MDA offense does indeed typically lead to GREAT years for capable all-star level PGs. Otherwise, we're talking about the analytical style that has the biggest impact. So you start out by saying CP3 had a career year, when literally the year before in basically the same minutes he put up basically the exact same stat line.More or less. Some areas SLIGHTLY better this year, some slightly worse. Had his worst PER since 2010-11. Some might point to lowered responsibilities... but again, he had the same # of minutes and his usage rate was EXACTLY the same. as I noted in an earlier post, Eric Gordon actually shoots threes worse with Houston than he did with NOP. Ariza had his best three year with the Wizards. Tucker is basically who he was. Etc. Some players benefit more than others. GG is a great example. Here, we want you to come in and shoot threes... perfect role for him and rejuvenated a career that was perhaps over. Harden is a perfect fit for his style. Harden/Capela pick and roll works and works well, ala Nash/Stoudemire. But otherwise we're talking a system that says let's really focus on 3s, and layups and increase efficiency that way, and if you're REALLY good at mid range jumpers, add some of those in. There are very few players in the league that are REALLY good at mid range jumpers. CP3 is one of them by shooting 49%-54% from various mid range areas (that's REALLY good for mid range). By its nature, such a system should make players more efficient offensively and unless you are a key creator and ballhandler reduce opportunities for those other players to make stupid plays, potentially increasing TS%s and PER... even in the face of possible reduced basic FG%s. I hope Melo adheres to this philosophy. That said, MDAs system certainly COULD work great for SFs, too. Not to downplay Shawn Marion's talents... but he's nowhere near the overall career player he turned out to be outside of MDAs system. The second he left Phoenix he became a less efficient, lower PER, lower basic stats, lower impact on the game player. By nature of the type of player Melo HAS BEEN HISTORICALLY, he's the exact type of player who wouldn't classically benefit from an MDA offense. Which is EXACTLY why he didn't when they were already paired in NYC and was less successful than an undrafted, small, Asian American guy we all know and love around here who despite being a much lesser player overall, stylistically played in a way that is a great fit for an MDA approach. So, Melo needs to adjust how he plays. Not that DM had/has any way to really find a Marion lite type player for the modern NBA, but that'd be an amazing perfect fit on this team.
The Leonard wasn't directly towards you. Saying best teams would rather want Ariza is speculation. Agreed you have yet to replace Ariza Guys have continuously brought up Ariza in Melo threads and vice versa as to say Melo is an Ariza replacement, the media has done it as well. So yeah in my opinion, from the way I'm viewing things, some media and fans are making it seem like Ariza is this Kawhi Leonard level guy and I say that because Leonard gave GS hell when he played them and some media and fans are acting as if you guys are incapable of beating GS without Ariza.
I base it off how much you help your team win. I think Ariza had a bigger positive on Houston's games than Melo did for OKC. The issue I have with Melo is that his shots just don't go in, as simplistic as that sounds. He is still one of the most skilled players in the NBA, he can dribble, he has great moves, great footwork, he can go to work in the post. We saw it in his summer workout hoodie videos last year, and we are seeing it again this year, he has a lot of great moves and he's a skilled player. He can find good shots against any player, and in that sense, he is hard to guard. Obviously Ariza cannot do any of this. But what does any of this matter when your shots don't go in? Last year he was 46th out of 48 in TS% for NBA players that take more than 14 shots per game. All his skill, moves, footwork, handles, and whatever else don't really matter if his great looks only go in 40% of the time. On top of that he is an extremely bad defender. His offense used to make up for it, but at this point in his career, I don't think it does anymore.
I think We won t get an ariza replacement till the trade deadline. We need it only for the postseason. I think the right thing to do is to wait till that date, when ryno's value will be surely higher considering his contract and we could try to take back some valuable defender. Jimmy buckets is probably a long shot but there will be plenty of ariza type of player available at the deadline. RELAX. In Morey we trust. And also in Melo we trust as the second option off the bench.
I think the team valued Ariza a lot more than you think. He was second in minutes behind James Harden and not behind by much. If he sucks so bad how come he played so much?
oh, I agree. He was a good team player. He is smart, and MDA/teammates trusted him not to mess up. My reminder is to say it is not an end-all be-all that we lost him. Like most people, he is replaceable. Mins will need to be split up.
I'm not concerned about losing Ariza's skills because he was in decline. I'm concerned about the minutes. He played a ton of minutes that we now have to find a fit for. Could Melo and more Tucker fill that role? I don't know. I hope so since what's done is done but we need another wing on this team that can at least hold their own defensively and if someone says MCW is a wing I will slap them silly.
"At the end of the day, it wasn't a good fit," he said. "I think last year -- and I haven't talked about this before -- everything was just so rushed, going to the team for media day and the day before training camp. Them guys already had something in place, and then I come along in the 25th hour like, oh s---, Melo just come on and join us. Like, you can figure it out since you've been around the game for a long time. That's why it was so inconsistent. At times, I had to figure it out on my own rather than somebody over there or people over there helping me." http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/24196232/carmelo-anthony-calls-offseason-journey-new-norm-nba
Ennis will take some. If he works out, probably most. I can't remember who much time Ariza and Luc played together. My memory is that Luc sub'ed in for Ariza. Then have to find room for Melo. So we will probable slightly more offensive, less defensive this year. I'm talking out my a$$, so take it for what it is worth.
To beat the Warriors we need another isolation phenom. Enter Carmelo Anthony. If Jeff Bzdelick can figure out the defense, the Warriors are in massive trouble.
[...] Whenever Melo officially joins the Rockets, there won’t be any honest talk of a new Big Three forming or claims that this puts them over the top in their ongoing battle against the Warriors. Their star forward will be a star only in the Lohanian sense: people know the name based on good work done a while ago. What he can offer, in whatever role he assumes, for however many minutes per game, is a timeworn version of what he always has, which is to say the ability to take over a game for a few minutes. It’s less reliable, less regular than it has ever been, but it exists—problematically, more strongly in Melo’s head than in reality. He can shoot threes okay. He’s stronger than most of the players who guard him, so he can bully them into the paint. He doesn’t need to hoard the ball to score, though he obviously prefers to. This is about it, as far as his list of strengths goes. It wasn’t longer five years ago, but it could be described in more enthusiastic terms. His defense throughout his career has been bad. It’s now perpetually abysmal. This hurts to ask: Houston would rather have kept Trevor Ariza than signed Melo, right? The money being equal, which it obviously isn’t. Because the Suns lavished Ariza with an oversized contract, the Rockets have swapped a good defender who spaces the floor and doesn’t ask questions to a matador who says, not a little haughtily, he knows that [he] still [has] so much left in the tank and bring so much to the game of basketball. D’Antoni’s boys were second in the league in offensive efficiency last year. Harden won an MVP on the back of creating more than fifty points per game for himself and his teammates. This is not a squad that needs ball-dominant scoring punch so much as a cast that props up Harden and Chris Paul and hits open shots when they’re passed to. Clint Capela, for instance, is a perfect fit. Melo—it’s not like he doesn’t have anything left to give, but he’s never had to blend in, nor has he ever demonstrated a willingness to do so. It would be wonderful, especially for folks who defended Carmelo in his prime, if he could find a way to make it work in Houston. He’s a generational talent who hasn’t totally gotten his due because of the mediocre teams he played for during his prime. (Which is his fault and not. The Knicks underserved him, but he didn’t have to stick around after they did.) Now he has finally, through a circuitous and mildly humiliating path, landed on a title contender. Ideally, he would appreciate that enough to do some self-examining and strongly consider what he can do for the Rockets, even if it’s not exactly what he’d like to. But he’s a prideful and stubborn guy who has seemed to come out the other end of his disappointing season with the Thunder more grumpy than reflective. If there’s something that can shake him from this state, it’s the stakes he’ll be staring down once he signs with Houston. And if that fails to humble Melo, nothing else will.
