[ClutchFans] Potential Rocket Profile: Carmelo Anthony

Not only does his offense and having to be guarded on the other side wear down opponents, but his team d is slightly better than Jones, he gets out to the perimeter better (which a lot of stretch 4's are starting to do) and his individual d (while he is lazy) is much stronger, for being a semi big guy, jones just gets pushed around like a doll, i feel like PBev could hold off a post up better than him. And melo is just a tank, much better at the post up.

his defense is better, his offense is WAY better.. and i think the offense makes the defense easier, even if the guy guarding melo is guarded by someone else on the other end. *wearing them out

 

I mean I know he is lazy, but he has the ability to be better than Jones when he tries IMO. and with him and harden on the offense. i think the whole opposition will be more tired on offense, making defense easier. they dont even have to guard TJones

 

I'm not buying it. Melo may be harder to post up, but he isn't going to be better at actually sticking to his man. No way he plays effective defense against Love, Aldridge, Dirk, Duncan. The first three will just be coming off pick & roll, pick & pop to shoot over a recovering Melo all night long, and Duncan will just bank shot over Melo's head.

 

Who knows if that's true or not because he's never actually tried before...or if he has then it means that he actually can't be better than Jones because he never has been before. Look at pretty much any metric for defense, Jones, while not very good, is WAY better than Melo on that side of the ball.

Melo's defense is so poor that his win shares per 48 minutes, which accounts for both sides of the ball, was almost identical to Terrence Jones' last year. Pretty amazing considering how much better Melo is on offense than Jones.

 

I don't know, those advanced stats say that Melo and Jones are about the same on offense. 113 points per 100 for Melo and 119 for Jones.

I don't buy into NBA win share stats at all personally.

Edit: But I'm still with you in not buying into the new Melo defense narrative.

 

Well the reason the offensive ratings are similar is because Melo is a bit of a chucker and offensive rating can be very much effected by efficiency. Jones is a more efficient scorer because most of his attempts are dunks and layups which are highly efficient, but he's not as talented when it comes to being a scorer.

On defense though, Melo has the same issues Jones does when it comes to being too small to guard legit PF's on top of Melo having the same problems Harden does when it comes to not caring about playing any defense at all.

The reason I'm not really into picking up Melo is because it would hurt the weakest part of our game while adding to the Rockets greatest strength. It could work out, but I could see a lot of games where the Rockets lose 130 to 140 too.

 

I think there is a thread on the Dish that i was posting on yesterday about can melo guard LMA and griffin. I looked into some stats,(im not sure how much this will show or not show you, but I bought into it a little)

Melo went for 34 pts and 15 reb to LMA's 18 and 14 on 11/25/13
Melo went for 28 and 8 to LMA's 15 and 12 on2/5/14

and Vs. Blake
Melo went for 27 and 10 to Blakes 15 and 10 on 11/27/2013
Melo went for 26 and 20 reb to Blakes 32 and 7 on 1/17/2014

So while hardly a great defensive player, he seems to have held his own vs both those guys. I dont think he is getting destroyed like many people think. Other than one great game by Blake, he didnt do badly at all. I think its a telling sign that in 4 games vs them he held them under 20 in 3 games.

I looked up how LMA and BG played against us last year in Reg season:

LMA:
28/12
27/20
31/25
21/5

BG:
7/1 (he only played 6 min, IIRC he got injured)
23/16
22/7
18/7

I was argued with on whether or not melo was actually guarding those guys, but I feel like either way we have better players than the Knicks and it shows something of how he tires them out.

Again im not saying hes the greatest defender, But the upgrade at PF is shown both offensively AND defensively

 

Our defense was the weak link last year but our offense was the problem as well at times. I agree completely with the idea that Anthony makes us a good bit better on both ends.

 

I understand our defense wouldnt be getting too much better and we are not strong defensively, but we would be scoring 130 no matter what on whoever we wanted, good defense or bad defense, I dont think there are many teams that can score 130+ at all, just not that good offensively.. maybe clippers or thunder, but that would be it and Im not sure what we could do to stop that out of our probabilities of 3rd stars.

 

Adding a second Harden on defense is going to make it really easy for other teams to score though. Jones wasn't great, but he's a good deal better than having Melo on defense.

 

I know it might be unlikely that Phil Jackson helps us out by doing a sign-and-trade with us for carmelo, but if he did we could possibly get shumpert back as well. Carmelo would have to sign for the same amount that he is already getting paid (slightly under max).

Rockets get: Carmelo and Shumpert

Knicks get: Asik, Lin, D-Mo (or jones..), and they can throw in their first rounder if need be.

This would not only get us Carmelo, but would also get us some of that wing defense we all want so badly. It would also keep us over the line so we would still have our MLE to sign another key role player as well as some of the other exceptions we still have.

Lineup:

PG - Beverly
SG - Harden
SF - Parsons
PF - Carmelo
C - Howard

Bench:

Shumpert
D-mo/Jones
MLE backup center (or someone like Ariza, but will sign in the MLE)

Shumpert could also be the back up point guard in this situation, so we would just need to use the MLE for a back up PF/C if we still don't trust D-mo or Jones, or we could use it on a back up SF such as Ariza, if he will sign for that low (unlikely, i know).

 

That means there are something seriously wrong with that advanced stats.

 

Melo is playing second fiddle right now. I just hope Morey doesn't screw this opportunity to get the best player on the planet.

 

Reminds me of when he entered the draft

He was coming off a NCAA National Championship . . ..
Almost a one man team . . . .
I thought he had proven more than some kid straight from high school
but
He was to play second fiddle to LeBron . . .and seems it always will.

Rocket River

 

I think Harden can put up similar numbers Iverson had when he was playing with Melo in Denver without missing a beat (e.g. 24 point and 5 assists).

 

And we are complaining about Harden's ISOs. LOL!

Kidding aside, this vid shows how extremely talented Melo is. Imagine if he could play with Howard and Harden and get more open looks. He can probably have multiple 40-pt games in a season (vice-versa with Harden). But, that is, if Mchale can come up with decent plays. There lies the problem. :grin:

 

There is no way that any sane basketballer can watch these videos and not believe that Melo would absolutely turn this team into a juggernaut.

 

We don't need BACKUP 3 that is a defense FIRST player if we get MELO, we need a offense first 3 coming off the bench.

I would start shumpert over parsons.

 

I thought about that, but the way people complain about paying Lin and Asik 8 mil to come off the bench, I can only imagine what they would say paying Parsons 10-12 mil to come off the bench.