Melo would be the perfect reason to ease Yao back into the offense instead of expecting him to carry the offensive load right away. Melo and Scola can occupy the post while Yao is still getting his endurance back. And if heaven forbid that Yao goes down again, we can channel the offense through Melo and Scola again. He was relatively healthy when he signed his 5 year 55 mill contract, after that THEN he started getting the nagging injuries.
Scola and Melo won't make the finals, and it still doesn't answer the fit problems the team will have once Yao gets in the game. Melo's a good player but I'm not sure how big of a help he will be to this team, and IMHO the production he will bring certainly doesn't justify the max contract we'll be paying him. Remember, Artest was thought of to the do the same thing as Melo, but when he got here he was forced to play a perimeter role, spotting up on 3's and trying to create off the dribble. I just don't think a roster with yao and scola already in it will make full use of Melo's post abilities. At the time though, everyone thought Martin was well worth the 10M contract. If he had been healthy and in a winning environment instead of the Kings, who knows? We could have been seeing him as a max player too. Melo's 26 pt ave isn't that far from the 25 pts KM used to bring in every night, and unlike Melo, Martin's efficiency was off the charts.
Artest doing about the same things as Melo is like the RealGM Rockets board being as busy as Clutchfans. Sure they are similar, but one is on a grander scale. The justification of the max contract AND the utilizing of Melo will be answered when we move on from the Yao Era. Sooner or later (and as of right now it's 50/50 on that), that is going to happen and we need to think ahead. I'm sorry but Martin is not a franchise player to build around, just like you said he's a Chris Bosh type and Chris Bosh isn't one either. There's a lot of tier 2 All-Stars players who got the max, Martin would have been no different if he got one too. A good player who would have been overpaid. You can hang your argument on efficiency all day long, but I'll take the more durable player who has the better inside outside game and can rebound too. Melo might not be in the stratosphere like Bron, Kobe, and DWade, but he's not that far off.
kings will be a 500 team instantly if they get melo which means bad news for us as well as the lakers.
