[Cleaning The Glass] How well will Carmelo Anthony fit in Houston?

Maaaaaaaaan I really want to read this, cleaning the glass has some great content.

 

I love cleaning

 

I wish we had a big Power Forward to clean the glass,

 

this is a massive relief. it was nearing 2 pm eastern and still no new Melo thread. you sure came through with this one OP, thanks!!

 

Is there a Lala Cleaning the Glass article?

 

I have a CtG account. I will post the full article once this thread gets going.

Spoiler

No but forreal I do have a CtG account - or, rather, I did. Not sure if my year subscription expired or not.

 

I’d like to read it if someone can post

 

if you do that I will relinquish my sworn nemesis enemyhood over you

 

I read it. It's not great. No interesting statistical insight, just quotes from unnamed league execs.

 

Wtf is cleaning the glass?

 

The only interesting bit for me is pointing out that "Olympic Melo" is grossly overestimated, as he shot only 39% in 2016.

Spoiler

Melo's Move

How well will Carmelo Anthony fit in Houston? Contributor Jordan Brenner takes a look.

August 20, 2018

By Jordan Brenner

When Carmelo Anthony signed with the Houston Rockets earlier this month, it was simultaneously one of the least surprising and most puzzling moves of the offseason. In one sense, the merger was obvious: Daryl Morey has always coveted stars, and Anthony was once a star. Add in Melo’s longstanding friendship with Chris Paul and there was a clear connection between player and team.

But from a pure basketball sense, the signing is tough to comprehend. Anthony struggled to fit with the Thunder last season, chafing at a subordinate role on offense. And the Rockets have just as clear a pecking order ahead of Melo: James Harden and Paul are the playmakers, and everyone else plays off them. The Rockets clicked last season because they had forwards who were comfortable in that limited offensive role and who dug in on defense. That’s not Melo’s game and it makes for an awkward fit.

So can the Rockets find a way to make it work? League sources are pessimistic. “I think it’s going to be tough,” says an Eastern Conference executive. “You watched him last year and there was obvious frustration with his role. He’s just not the same guy he was.”

Adds a Western Conference exec, “They are not the same team. Can they be as good a team? I don’t know. But last year they had a defensive mindset for the first time and they were tough. Losing two of those guys is definitely painful and replacing them with Carmelo, yeah, you have a different personality now.”

Those two guys are Trevor Ariza and Luc Mbah a Moute and, along with P.J. Tucker, their tenacity and attention to detail helped transform the Rockets into the NBA’s sixth-best defensive team after ranking 18th in 2016-17. Now they’re gone and Anthony has to take their place. Although the Thunder managed to build a strong defensive unit last season, it was in spite of Anthony, who ranked 73rd among power forwards with a -1.25 defensive RPM.

Of course, as the West exec says, “I don’t think they signed him with the intent to be a stellar defender. Mike [D’Antoni] has had him before. Mike knows.”

Instead, the real question is whether Anthony can be good enough offensively to compensate for whatever he costs Houston on defense. That will require a significant transformation on his part. Houston, of course, runs a steady diet of pick-and-roll and/or isolation with either Harden or Paul handling the ball; the shots others get come directly off their playmaking. As a result, catch-and-shoot threes accounted for 59% of Ariza’s field-goal attempts, 70% of P.J. Tucker’s shots and 51% of Mbah a Moute’s.

Anthony, meanwhile, has been a ball-dominant player for his entire career. Last season was his first attempt to shift into more of a spot-up role, and it didn’t go particularly well: 35% of his shots were catch-and-shoot threes, and he knocked them down at a decent 37% clip. In his three previous seasons, less than 20% of his shots were catch-and-shoot threes. So it will be a brave new world in Houston for Anthony, as he stands on the weak side and waits for a kick-out.

“Carmelo struggles when the ball’s not in his hands,” says the West exec. “He needs a lot of opportunities to get the ball in a rhythm. Maybe in this kind of offense, where there’s transition and he’s getting to take quick shots, maybe he’ll get into a rhythm and it’ll work, but when it comes down to half-court sets in the playoffs and he’s sitting on the weak side, that’s a problem.”

Anthony does have a more versatile offensive game than the guys he’s replacing, so perhaps D’Antoni will find more creative ways to utilize him. Maybe he’ll screen for Harden or Paul in a small-ball lineup, or work from the elbows to key the second unit. The problem is that the types of shots Melo generates are exactly the ones that the Rockets try to avoid. Last season, 31% of his shots were long 2-pointers, which placed him in the league’s 97th percentile. And he hardly ever gets to the rim anymore—those high-value shots accounted for just 15% of his offense, which put him in the 4th percentile at his position.

So Houston has a square peg/round hole issue, one that is exacerbated by the fact that Anthony is 34 years old. There has been talk of rekindling the mythical “Olympic Melo,” but that player was younger, worked against a lower level of competition and wasn’t always great: While Anthony hit 54% of his shots in the 2012 Olympics, he made just 39% in 2016.

Add it all up and you see why so many decision-makers are shaking their heads about the move. “I don’t know what type of environment or system he can play well in and help a team win at this stage of his career,” says a second East exec. “I think he would have to be really humbled to accept the role he could really help a team in, which is to come off the bench, play against backup fours and be a second option off the bench.

“But when you have a player thinking he’s one thing and everyone else seeing another, it’s a recipe for what happened in OKC.”

Jordan Brenner is a sports journalist who has covered the NBA for nearly two decades. He is the former NBA editor for ESPN The Magazine.

 

Cool Melo thread bro.

Speaking of cleaning glass... I could really see myself doing that.

 

They probably do the most insightful NBA research in the public domain and have the best advanced stats. But since they're a pay-site with limited free contents, most people don't know them. I only found out about them when Ben Falk did his top 50 NBA players a while back.

 

This is just plain wrong.

 

That article by shottracker was way better than this one, disappointed.

 

New Melo thread, but no article content.

I am dissapoint

 

Overall, 2/5 article. Run-of-the-mill, brings nothing to the table. Could've been written by anyone in the top 50% of Clutchfans.

Because we know he will adjust his game on the Rockets, but we don't know exactly how, it's stupid to sit and repeat (over and over) that old Melo won't fit in with the Rockets.

Then, mentioning Ariza and Moute every time Melo is mentioned is getting a little tiring. Finally, no credit to Chris Paul or Clint Capela for the improvement of the defense? It was ALL Ariza+Moute+Tucker?

I still want another defensive wing, don't get me wrong. But I think a discussion of Carmelo and the Rockets defense are two separate discussions. If people are only going to look at defense with Melo... it's going to be a long season.