by Carmelo Anthony is one of the more polarizing players in the NBA, and most people consider him to be the prototypical superstar. After all, he certainly fits the definition. Melo’s a 7-time All-Star, has ascended to All-NBA selection 6 times, and is a scoring champion, with a slew of high profile game-winning shots to match his great crunch time statistics. Reputation-wise, Anthony is always a top contender in jersey sales and is one of the best known players in the entire league.
Melo might be also be the single best scorer in the NBA, or at least the one with the most varied skill set to do so (and that includes competitors like Kevin Durant.) He can shoot it from anywhere, and has an incredibly quick trigger. He is strong as a bull (yes, hint intended) and can bully his defender under the rim or on the post. Carmelo is a great rebounder for his size, and probably has the quickest second jump in the league, which allows him to put back misses at the basket. Over the last few years, Melo has developed into one of the best three-point shooters in the league, a weapon he didn’t have before. Consider this: he’s averaging twice the amount of shots at the arc in the last two years (averaging 414.5, previous average 172 over 11 seasons), but continued to maintain accuracy at 37.9% and 40.2%. Carmelo is right in the middle of his prime, and the 2013-14 season was statistically probably the best season of his career.
However, Anthony missed the playoffs for the first time in his career this season. Despite being one of the top clutch players in the league, he has only made it out of the first round twice. Melo is often criticized as being a ball-hog and isolation player who doesn’t make his teammates better. The perception is that he doesn’t play any defense, and isn’t willing to sacrifice for his team. Lots of NBA people point to his success at the 2012 Beijing Olympics as proof that Melo would thrive in a role where he doesn’t have to be the number one guy and leader in the locker room; this view is further compounded by the fact that during the 2012-13 season, when the Knicks won 54-games and advanced past the first round of the playoffs since 2000, Jason Kidd was largely considered to be the leader of the Knicks.
Which one is it?
Is Anthony a true superstar, capable of pushing his team to championship contention, or an overrated one dimensional scorer who doesn’t make his teammates better? Looking at the stats, he was 9th this year in PER and the Knicks went down the toilet on both offense and defense when he was not on the floor. Per NBA.com, when Melo was off the floor the Knicks were a -6.9 points per 100 possessions, compared to a +0.9 when he was on the court. That is the equivalent of going from slightly above league average to being the worst in the league. It may be surprising that the defense got better, but considering Anthony’s backups when he sits (Stoudemire, Bargnani, Smith and Hardaway), it becomes more of an outcome of who he is replaced by, than what Melo is doing. On offense the Knicks actually had more assists when he was on the floor, hinting that there’s more systemically wrong with the Knicks offense, than with Melo himself. After all, he averaged 3.1 assists per game, which is still better than a lot of players with a similar usage rate.
Melo has never been a low IQ player. He just needs to put in better positions to succeed, where he feels like he can make the next play, instead of isolating on top for ten seconds and jacking up a long two. Anthony is a special offensive player, and he’s not dumb on defense. He has always been a great post defender, in large part due to his strength and quick jumping ability. The underrated part of him playing a stretch four is that he isn’t forced to chase around perimeter players, opening up open three pointers off of screens and back door cuts. Instead he can stay closer to the basket and while he doesn’t protect the rim like a typical power forward, he is strong enough to bang down low and a better rebounder than most power forwards, something coach Mike Woodson went away from this season, with the acquisition on Andrea Bargnani.
There’s only a couple of players in the league at one time who can make your teams an instant contender. Right now the only guys who are clearly in that category are Kevin Durant and LeBron James. Carmelo is nowhere near that status, but he is in the next tier of players, who can win if they are put in a position where their strengths are utilized well and they are given a team that is built around what they do best. Even if you’re a top-10 player, it takes more luck and support than people realize to get deep into the playoffs, Chris Paul is widely considered to be the 3rd best player in the league, and he’s never made it past the second round.
The 2013-14 Knicks and Free Agency
The story of 2013-14 New York Knicks was not pretty. J.R Smith was suspended for the first five game after violating the NBA’s anti-drug program, they lost 13 of their first 16 games, and it didn’t get much better from there, with Andrea Bargnani doing things like this. Tyson Chandler, the only steady player on the Knicks roster in the past decade, missed 27 games. Meanwhile, J.R Smith was busy untying shoelaces left and right, and coach Mike Woodson was in the midst of one of the worst coaching jobs you will find. The Knicks were so uncoordinated, so out-of-whack and did so much stupid stuff, you’d think they were doing it on purpose.
Take a look at this pick and roll play. The Knicks did this so often it had to have been in the game plan, and it’s one of the dumbest things any NBA teams has done with their defensive coverages in a while. The man guarding the strong side corner would rotate toward the ball handler to stop penetration to the lane, and the job of the original defender (Felton in this case), was to rotate to the corner, a difficult rotation that doesn’t work, like ever. This rotation is bewildering, and no one, I repeat no one else does this. The corner three-pointer is the easiest three-point shot, and many teams design their offenses to generate as many of them as possible. The Knicks apparently, loved handing them out on a silver platter. This is just one of a myriad of odd things that Woodson would have the Knicks do, and it’s a miracle they managed to rank even 24th in defensive efficiency. Andrea Bargnani is basically useless to a good NBA team, something the Knicks for the life of them couldn’t figure out. Mike Woodson just continued playing him, imagining that he brought floor spacing and toughness to the floor, despite every statistic ever invented to describe basketball being against him. It’s clear now that the wonderful small-ball-Carmelo-at-power-forward era was an accident and not a result of good coaching.
Melo’s impending free agency is interesting. He is likely to receive a max-offer somewhere close to the possible $129 million from the Knicks, but turns 30 in a month, and is only a couple of years away from his skills and athleticism starting to decline. His prime is being wasted on a putrid Knicks team that is capped out for at least one more year, and even after the 2014-15 season they are still paying Raymond Felton and J.R Smith a combined $11 million, something you really don’t want to do. Assuming Melo resigns this summer, his contract will be somewhere north of $25 million that year. They will have the cap space for another max-level player, and now Phil Jackson is heading the organization, but are we even sure any of the top free agents want to come? Players are heavily incentivized to stay with their current teams under the new collective bargaining agreement, and the top tier free agents that year are Rajon Rondo, LaMarcus Aldridge(happy in Portland), Kevin Love (everyone in the league thinks he’s going to the Lakers) and Marc Gasol (happy in Memphis). Even if you got one of these guys, would that make the Knicks a title favorite?
Probably not.
If he can’t win it with the Knicks, how about somewhere else? The Bulls for example, are a rumored Melo destination, but to go there he would be willing to take a massive pay cut. Dwight Howard took a pay cut last year to leave the Lakers, but even his starting salary is a reported $20.5 million, and even if the Bulls were to amnesty Boozer and trade away Dunleavy, Melo would still be looking at a starting salary of about $17.5 million. A difference of a few million dollars per year over the lifetime of a contract is a lot to give up, and it’s hard to see Melo choosing that path, unless he truly doesn’t care about money at all. It’s easy to judge a professional athlete –“They make enough money anyway”– is a common reaction, but I don’t know how many people would take an almost $50 million dollar pay cut, even if you are choosing between $130 and $80 million, even if it was your best shot at winning an NBA title.
We have already seen Melo being a vocal point on a good 54-win Knicks team during the 2012-13 season. Capturing that same magic is difficult, and highly unlikely to happen again in New York. That team was old and not built to last, but was proof that you could be something special around Anthony if you’re smart about it. It’s hard to say how many years Anthony can continue playing at such a high level, but it’s likely that by the end of his next contract, he could already be on the decline. The clock is ticking for Carmelo Anthony, and this summer he will make the most important decision of his career – whether to be a lone star under the bright lights of Madison Square Garden, or join another team like the Bulls that can complement his weakness and bring out the best of his strengths. You never know what’s going to happen, but one thing is sure: New York definitely isn’t the best place for him to find success.
