the STARS played poorly. what do you not understand about that being the main factor in the slow start ? melo was irrelevant. your highest paid players were trash, therefore the team was trash. you are trying to create a different narrative to scapegoat melo and justify what happened to him. he does not handle the ball and control the offense so how was he a factor in the stars playing like **** ? im convinced many of you didnt even watch the games just looked at the box score. cp3 said melo did everything that was asked of him while he was here, but i guess ill take the word over some random CF poster over cp3.....LOL
how was he any worse than anyone else ? all players are not equal in their responsibilities to the team. the stars are needed to perform a lot more than melo, so if your best players arent playing well, guess what happens ? the team loses. i cant believe i have to explain this to people.
You have some serious issues with reading comprehension so this is going to be my last post, I'm done with this discussion. Nobody said Melo was the main factor. The highest paid players played poorly, that is true. It was a bigger problem (or factor) than Melo playing poorly, that is also true. All players are not equal in their responsibilities to the team, also true. You're saying a lot of true things here that nobody disagrees with, you don't have to explain this **** to anyone. But none of this matters because the only thing being discussed here is that Melo was ONE of the problems, he was ONE factor, and he deserves SOME of the blame (more than 0%). That's all anyone is saying. And you are saying he deserves 0%, and that's wrong. Nothing I have said here contradicts what Chris Paul said about Melo.
youre wrong, there are people here DO blame melo. they believe the problems started by signing him, and ended when he was released.
You act like the man hasn't averaged 16-12 in his down years. In his prime he was actually pretty good (not great) in the post. He averaged 27-15 when Harden epic choked that first year of the playoffs against the blazers. When Harden got better, that's when Dwight got worse, and then his touches decreased every season and he was so bad, that he averaged about 15-12 ... even with all those inefficient post touches. People can join the bandwagon and crap on his attitude and his fts and whatnot, but has there been a single season where he wasn't averaged Capela's numbers? Even last year's injury-ridden season he was averaging 10-10 on limited minutes. I'm not saying he's some kind of star by any means (or that he's hakeem on the block), but he aint the trash people say he is, when he's even remotely healthy.
What about that comment do you fee like you refuted. Dwight’s athleticism was so elite that he could have averaged 20 and 15 without a play ever being run for him through transition, lobs, dunks and putbacks. Greatest garbage man ever and his teams would have been better for it.
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/15596878/dwight-howard-qa-superman-returns ESPN: You mentioned your season in Houston didn't end the way you wanted. You have also admitted you were "disinterested" during parts of the year. Why was that? Howard: "There were times I was disinterested because of situations that happened behind the scenes that really hurt me. It left me thinking, 'This is not what I signed up for.''' ESPN: What specifically are you referring to? Howard: "I felt like my role was being reduced. I went to [Rockets general manager] Daryl [Morey] and said, 'I want to be more involved.' Daryl said, 'No, we don't want you to be.' My response was, 'Why not? Why am I here?' It was shocking to me that it came from him instead of our coach. So I said to him, 'No disrespect to what you do, but you've never played the game. I've been in this game a long time. I know what it takes to be effective.''' "As a big, someone who has been the focal point of the team, who is still young, who still has some great years in front of me, you run the floor, you sprint as hard as you can, you duck in, and still, you don't get the ball. It brings you down. It sucks the energy out of you.
So because you think he could've been the best garbage man ever and massively underachieved, you wouldn't take him for the MLE? Instead you'd prefer Hartenstein or something? And I doubt his magic teams wouldve been better with him getting less touches. I think there's a massive misconception that Dwight didn't do rim rums and crash the glass. He did every year he played for us. Of course he wanted the ball more and was only efficient in it in his first season during the playoffs against the blazers, but it's not like he quit on us because he was unhappy or was some cancer on his way out. We simply just lost in the playoffs against the warriors.