At this point, Melo is a bench shot creator (for himself). He can get hot sometimes and it's helpful or he can be cold and it hurts you. Dantoni's offense has no place for creators other than the PGs, everyone else is a spacing the floor with shooting or rolling to the rim. Melo was mediocre at those things. Gary Clark was also mediocre in those roles on offense but he was a better defender. You could argue that this is proof of Dantoni's coaching limitations and he was the one that's should have been released. But, he was just coming off a conference finals run and Melo had a bad outing in the first round.
both our signings were cheap experiments you do see contenders where its not unusual to eat a minimum contract...thats what it was minimum contract and people underestimate the fluid adjustments of players. Sometmes they can sometimes they cant. And Carmelo had a couple disappointng showings both with us and okc, and then found a groove, adjuted, trusted that and now he has a new niche as a bench scorer that hes finally accepted and the league feels he fits better in. it wasn't the right deal, but eaating a minimum is no big deal, he wasn't the right fit at the right time for us in how we played and he was unable to adjust btu the nba economics issue is how long we kept his contract. normally you just cut a minimum and try another experiment, we kept him on the payrol until we could trade him bc our main agenda was tax savings likewise with the other signings, a minimum ennis actually played, he was traded at the deadline for a protected top 55 2nd. We also had to cut daniel House n january for 2 months, mid season, while he was playing big minutes because of tax reasons. Thats the 'wnning culture' of harden coming home seeing other contenders pay tax in big and small markets, while he never sits out, plays games ,carries teams("Harden had a 90 game stretch averaging 38.6 PPG from 12/13/2018 to 1/8/2020" ) and he comes back to his locker room and sees empty lockers and his job becoming harder...then on this team with cheaped out margins and less depth, the owner takse the mike after the 2019 playoffs and says HE will teach them a winning culture.... Wonder why all the guys left? I'm sure they'll have to deal with the owners lke that in the public/press on any team...right..any team?
The guy was on a cheap deal if i'm not mistaken. Should have traded him for something. Maybe a package deal. I think alot of things we did was rushed. Maybe portland would have traded something to us for something but the way it was handled was terrible.
