I am praying I am looking wrong and you're not using the WS to prove that Melo wasn't the best player on that team.
Didn't want to believe it myself when I first saw that. But I bet if you compare to all other elite players mentioned on this board, Anthony may be the only one who is consistently ranked low on the team. Or else a thread like this won't even exist.
I know you said elite but by this logic. Joakim Noah was the best player on Chicago not Derrick Rose.
Just look at 82games.com and look at position rank for PER differential for Denver. Denver's SF position rank is 2 which only behind Cleveland for last year. http://www.82games.com/0809/BYPOSIT.HTM SF rankings. 1. Cleveland 2. Denver 3. Philly 4. Boston 5. OK What's even more interesting is that Philly has the 3rd best SF position in the league in per differential.
In terms of TS%, Melo has finished ahead of Kobe twice in his seven year career. So I may have been wrong about this past season, but Kobe has been a more efficient scorer throughout his career. The list above also shows that there are about a dozen other players that were more efficient than Melo last season as well. I was refuting the claim that Melo was the best "pure scorer." If there are other guys scoring more efficiently, how is Melo a better pure scorer, especially when some of these guys average about the same number of total points.
Except he has led his college team to a championship, team USA to a gold medal, and the Nuggets to the brink of the NBA finals (farther that the Rockets have been in 15 years)
carmelo anthony's game is like adrian dantley's game. only difference is that carmelo shoots the ball alot more, and drives to the basket alot less.
Lol, come on now. Is it not that our team consists of players who LEAD by example? But you still can't win with them if the talent level is not there. We might argue there yet again. We would be there in the conference finals if the poor leader McGrady was more durable. Yes, we were that close. Can't have it all. World is not perfect but we can still win it with the right ingredients.
Lol, well seeing as how t-mac really only missed one year of the playoffs for us and Yao has only played in 2 in what the last 5-6 years, we can't really hold him accountable for all our loses. I think when it comes to the playoffs one of our superstars was A LOT less durable than the other. I hate the argument when everyone says it was a best shot, yes it was the most talented team we had but I feel like every year before 08 we had a shot. I believe t-mac elevated our craptastic roster as well as he knew how, it fell on Yao's shoulders when he couldn't make it to the playoffs... That being said, this team doesn't need a superstar so Melo still fits in. We need a guy who can score the ball and create, and he can. Look at what there is in Denver to give melo space on offense, Nene who's range is 4 feet, birdman who is more of a threat to block melo than to make a shot, JR smith who I would leave open just because he's probably the streakest guy in the league and I would much rather let Smith beat my team than melo. Finally there's Chauncey and like everyone always says, point guards aren't the anchor in a contender. Watch some of the baskets melo gets, the dude gets hammered under the basket and still muscles his way there. Imagine how well this guy will operate with guys 1 through 5 that can spread the entire court to let him operate. You put this guy in the right situation and he will flourish. I won't say he'll be the most efficient scorer but I will say I think he is the best one on one scorer since Tracy a la orlando.
I doubt the people saying he wasn't a leader on that team actually watched Melo pre-NBA. Good thing there are only a seldom few who would throw around out-of-arse information. I'll take Melo over anyone else on this team in a heart beat.
LOL do you even know how this "efficiency" is measured? Can you tell me why this almighty efficiency stat makes Melo efficient? Because if we go to True Shooting Percentage (which is basically the one and true measure of effciency because it takes into consideration 3 pointers and fts) Melo is nowhere near elite. What kind of "best pure scorer" is he when other players score at a better rate? The "pure scorer" rep gets in the way of your analysis of melo, the same way the most people think AI was one of the best scorers in history.
Last time I checked, coaches don't touch the ball, the players do. Melo has been a winner at every level of basketball he has played at.
Kobe has a lower PPS stat than Carmelo. I guess Kobe isn't elite either. I love how you guys love to pick and choose stats to suit your view point. Carmelo is elite because he forces opposing teams to double on him or he will go off for 40 on you. If you command a double team on a regular basis, then you are elite. That's why most people considered Tmac and Iverson elite in their primes even though their shooting percentages were pathetic.
