[SI] Melo is still shaken by his short Houston stint

Melo talking like he was here ballin then got let go…

he was awful, but since he’s a “former star,” it’s like he was entitled to playing time

if the Rockets kept him, but sat his ass on the bench because he was truly that bad, that would’ve been a big problem and media story too…he’d have been b*tching about not getting PT instead of b*tching about getting cut

dudes get cut with no fanfare or hoopla all the time, but because it was washed Melo, u can’t do that

How come it took over a year for a team to sign him again?

Melo’s last season in the NBA, he averaged 13 points on 44/38/83 shooting splits with the Lakers, yet no team picked him up the next season. He eventually just had to retire. Tells me all I need to know

Lemme guess, the entire NBA blackballed Melo and forced him to officially call it quits?

 

in all fairness... it was a very limited sampling size.. he was logging most minutes with the 2nd unit (which was crap) except for 1 or 2 games where he had to start and be the main guy (due to injuries)... how many mins did he, harden and cp3 even play together? fit... lol.. naw... folks didnt want to make sh*t work - so it didnt...
our gameplan looked totally nonexistent at the time... as folks recollect, MDA was lost on the defense wo bzdelik - and undoubtedly had furter implications...
All this 'fit issues' was overblown imo... dude only played in 10 games - 10 games! lol! This was personal - obv w bzdelik and i also believe w MDA too...
C'mon we got all these 'fit issues' with a 10x all star on a sweetheart deal that we gotta cut lose of him after 10 games... but down the road we trade CC and go all in on that small ball nonsense to try to accommodate 'fit' w WB... naw man... that makes no sense...

 

he was too stupid to get it then. clearly he's still that stupid even now

 

All I remember of that time with Melo was he looked overweight, slow and shot a bunch of bricks from just inside the 3 point line. He was a complete letdown after all those years of Morey chasing after him.

 

im not saying for a min that i dont respect Bzdelik for what he did...

for me, it comes down to who said what - and when did they say it...

DM pursued Melo for awhile...
if bzdelik had told DM that he wouldnt work w Melo - and DM ignored... then good for Bzdelik for sticking to his guns (and bigger props for not going public with his reason)... and shame on Morey for not ironing things out beforehand... and for undervaluing coaching...
if bzdelik never said anything throughout our recruitment of Melo - and THEN tossed a tizzy n quit and caused the upheaval - then thats Jeff's bad... i understand it, but still unacceptable... imo...

i'd love to know the whole story...

 

Defense was the issue although Melo's shooting was up and down during the 10 games. Defense though, that was it, that was the issue. You could of played him 30 games and although the shooting would have likely improved, the defense would have not.

The Rockets made the right move to cut him. That year we had CP3 coming in out of shape and fat, Tilman was cheap and didn't want to pay for good players (Ariza, even if we didn't want to overpay was our best option), and then we brought in someone that was clearly not a good option based on his performance with OKC.

Playing more than 10 games would not have changed that with Melo. That season sucked.

 

Melo was lazy as F when he was here. He's one of those players that wanted it all to come to him.

 

Never should have tried it in the first place... feels like someone made a decision without consulting other decision makers. Shut up and listen.

 

He didn’t go through a form of “basketball death.” He was pronounced basketball DEAD.

 

yeh, that season just sucked...
whether one wants to call it the stupidity of all the distractions (bzdelik) to bring in someone who obviously didnt still have the skill set to help us...
or conversely... call it the stupidity of giving up on a 10x all-star and cutting ties after 10 just games - with questionable effort to make it work...
either way... there was stupidity afoot...
lol!

 

Oh you poor baby. You didn’t perform and you lost your job. What a travesty.

 

Rockets trying to do it all on the cheap, too. They traded /scapegoated James Ennis to get under luxury tax. To bring in lame Iman Shumpert. After they didnt pay to retain Ariza. They did bring in Austin Rivers & Kenneth Faried as decent cheap vet signups. Just seems no matter what they did, it wasnt going to work too well that season. CP3's brief decline set things back on everything else.

 

here we go again lol. how many times is he going to cry about this?

 

a thinly veiled post that shoulda been titled as 'Bron, time to move', instead, sneakily finding its way to GARM

 

I don't know the reason behind it, doesn't matter its so far in the past but...

I mean I think that would mentally ruin the confidence of many players, especially one as accomplished as he was. Dude got cut 10 games in a season, he never experienced anything like that and was used to teams bending to his will and needs as a player so I can understand from his POV how it really shocked him and probably rocked his confidence. I'm sure he thought because of who he was he'd be giving more of a leash.

I think these players, players like him, you know guys who were once top 10 in the world at what they do, operate at a different level of confidence then the every day person and it might seem delusional but its that mindset that got him to those levels in the first place. So when his skills diminish its hard for someone like him to accept that. He's thinking its deeper than basketball because in his mind he's one of the best players on any team he's on, it's hard for him to accept being kicked off of a team and that was really the first time it happened.

I think in sports its a story as old as time.

This is why guys like Iverson try to go out on their pride because they don't want people laughing about their twilight years and want people to remember them for when they were at their best. It's a no-win situation because people to this day say Iverson was selfish and couldn't humble himself to play a bench role but if he did people would be calling him scrub and washed simply because his body aged and he can't react to the speed of the game the same way he could.

 

i did not like MDA... im of the opinion that u build your gameplan to maximize your players attributes... not devise a gameplan and then try to shove players into roles they are not suited for... ie u dont devise a gameplan to shoot an inordinate # of 3s when u have mediocre shooters... smh

 

Who cares, he was never a Rocket.

DD

 

Melody was trash and never should have been a Rocket to begin with.