Max: "Is Carmelo Anthony being scapegoated? No. Carmelo Anthony isn't good. He hasn't been good for awhile. At some 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 NY, it wasn't in OKC and now in Houston. ... You can't keep making excuses for Carmelo Anthony." @Zboy @YOLO Waiting for @Shaq2Yao or @Snow Villiers to make the thread.
This is interesting. I mean, I don't get a sense from players or even coaches that they are upset with management. There are some comments that cause me to double take though. MDA saying "talk to Daryl", Chris Paul with his "we will see" comments, things like that. Again, the events that follow this will expose Morey's true character here. I still side that Melo is the one asking to be out of here. Morey, CP3, Harden and even MDA are trying to get him to be patient. But who knows?
Morey is worried about how this looks around the league......but in the end it will pass. Melo doesn't fit....if both parties went in eyes wide open, as reported, then this is no big deal....let him go find a team he fits on.... DD
Looking back, MDA's apparent flip-flopping on the switch defense might have something to do with this. It sounded like he felt the pressure to change the defense but didn't think it was the right thing to do. Maybe Melo didn't like the defensive scheme and wanted the team to change. Again, whoever thinks Melo was brought in just as a vet min role player is delusional. Melo was not going to let you treat him like a vet min role player.
I’m not saying Melo sucks but he just doesn’t fit our play style.. we need asharp shooters to spread the floor for harden and Paul to penetrate.. we don’t need Melo posting up and slowing our offense down
I've never bought the idea that "it's a risk-free move because he's signed to the minimum." Sure, you can cut him easily enough, but if he hurts the team and they lose games, how is that risk-free? Melo isn't the whole problem, and to some extent he's the inevitable scapegoat because he's the big offseason move and they were so much better last season. But it was easy to see this coming, and amazing that so many people just refused to see it coming. The only person who comes out of this looking worse than Melo is Morey.
Singling out Carmelo isn't right. He has had some good games. I was shocked with his OKC failure though.
I.D.I.O.T. Anyway, IIRC, MDA was reluctant to play Lin but was forced to because he was the only healthy PG. The rest was history. When Melo came back from injury, Linsanity promptly stopped.
A lot of this has to do with the defense. Melo has been trying but when he's on the floor we give up, what?, 114 points a game (I saw this today in an article I'm too lazy to go find), and when he sits we give up something like 105 points. I know I don't have exact numbers but something like that. Maybe while our guys are learning how to shoot a basketball again they can rely on defense to eke out some wins. And hopefully the offense will follow suit.
If you look back at all the threads, it wasn't as predictable as it would seem for the majority of Clutchfans. I kept getting **** from people for believing it wouldn't work. The whole, Chris and him are BFFs, Chris will make sure it works out, etc etc. Yet, here we are.
http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/...tting-carmelo-anthony-gm-calls-reports-unfair It’s like people just ignored this article. When morey, Paul and coach are saying he’s been “great” for us and expect him to play I’ll go with their comments over rumors.
Regardless of what the actual issue is if Melo is released by Houston then we would have taken a significantly step back from last years team both in terms of talent and chemistry. Losing Ariza and Mbah a Moute hurt in terms of defense and chemistry, but their on court talent wasn't irreplaceable. Ennis seems to be better suited off the bench and Clark has played well. But its left us with little to no bench. Melo was supposed to fit that role but is he the 6th man? I thought that was Gordon? Is he the 7th man then? I dont see how anyone could objectively say he is better than Gordon right now. There just wasn't a good spot for him if he wasn't willing to take a step back. To Melo's credit he was willing to come off the bench as the 6th man. And FWIW he has had some good and some bad games (just like Gordon has). Chemistry is affected because he is Paul's guy and it does show a little that they try to get Melo his shots when he is in the game. He could be a huge offensive asset to any team IMO if he can get his head straight for his role - I mean is he worse than Gerald Green at this point? IMO Melo would be the perfect Gerald Green role for this team but we already have Gerald Green. Suspensions and injuries (Wish Nene is back soon) have played their role to the Rockets slow start (along with a fairly brutal schedule IMO) but looking at the schedule I honestly thought they would be 1-2 games over .500 not 5-7 right now. Morey will still have a long way to go to fill out the roster. He has some of the MLE still which is good for the buyout market, if anything "good" has come out from the Butler saga (another huge distraction for the team) is that it seems he is willing to part with multiple first round picks and has Knight/Chriss as salary fillers to get more talent. Its a shame we couldnt get Tyson but the lure of playing in your hometown is hard to beat at times. Honestly I doubt this would be possible but I would love a scenario where Chriss and Knight are traded each with a future first round pick. Knight and FRP to the Heat for James Johnson and Chriss,FRP, SRP to Orlando for Jonathan Simmons. That would be just more of a dream though for me.
