Has their schedule been more difficult? The record with and without Melo seems pretty striking to me. They should have probably been exploring ways to trade him.
12-18 with Melo. No. You don't trade a player like Melo. Those who want him, can't afford him, and those who can afford him, don't want him. Plus, he is just out of form. I have no doubts he will go back to 25/10/5 very soon. The reality is that he is an offensive juggernaut SF in a PG system. It don't work. All that Lin can do it run nice pick and rolls. Melo doesn't score off that, Chandler and STAT do. Until they get a fiercely good PG, that team is going to be a floater. NYK was playing teams with an average win % of something like 46%. After now, they only get breaks against us, the Wizards, and Cleveland. The rest is Miami, 3 x Chicago, OKC etc. 4 games back and a rapidly increasing strength of schedule? Its about to get real difficult. And they are going to have a hard time justifying all that expenditure for so little results.
But 8-1 with Lin and without Melo. Since Melo rejoined them, they are 2-8. That is a very sharp turn of events. Before Melo, Lin averaged the following: 25.0 points 9.2 assists 5.9 turnovers .698 TS% 17.9 FGA per game Since Melo returned: 16.2 points 7.8 assists 3.9 turnovers .582 TS% 13.9 FGA per game It looks like is just not having the ball in his hands as much as he was during their winning streak. Everything is down. And what has Melo done in the last 10 games? He has shot .403 (vs. .400 total for the year) with 17.1 FGA per game. The only guys on the Pistons who have a worse shooting percentage than that are Ben Wallace (.388/ 1.2 FGA/g), Will Bynum (.356/ 4.6 FGA/g), Walker Russell (.312/ 2.7 FGA/g, and Austin Daye (.301/ 5.6 FGA/g). And all of those guys get very limited playing time and shot attempts. So adding Melo to their lineup is sort of like sticking in Ben Wallace on offense and having him take 17 shots per game and then switching him out for Charlie Villanueva on the defensive end. I'd trade him. He's an all star who is shooting .400 from the field and .308 from deep this year with an assist to tov ratio of 1:1 for his career. It doesn't get much more overvalued than that. The top 3 +/- players on the Knicks are Fields, Novak, and Lin. The bottom 3 are Melo, Bibby, and Amare. He does show strong leadership qualities though. Here is his recent words of wisdom to pump up his team after the Philly loss:
is .550 asking too much from this collection ? Melo shouldn't need a PG. He should get to the hole with ease.
I'm a big fan of stats especially when it comes to sports. But they say here that Lin is a better player, ceteris paribus, than Carmelo Anthony. Just let that sink into your head for a few moments. I like Lin. Think he is a good player. Superstar? No. All-star? Maybe, but not for basketball reasons. And this is the exact reason why quantitative analysis is slightly overvalued by some. I put Melo and LBJ in similar categories. You build teams for these players. You don't just throw them in a lineup and expect results. Melo is a volume scorer, just like Ellis or Kobe, but he isn't getting the quality that he is used to in Denver. Maybe he ain't playing as well too. I don't know - we don't go way back. But I guess what it comes down to is this. Who is going to trade for Melo's weighty contract while he is out of form? In the Knicks position, I would be looking for a PF who plays defense. Not a replacement for a player who on a good night could be the most prolific scorer in the NBA.
I would not build a franchise around Melo.... I'd take GM over Melo....right now, for my franchise type of player.
Any other all stars with a worse shooting percentage and a worse ast/tov ratio? Ever? Melo is talented and spectacular at times, but he's very inefficient and shoots more than anyone else on every team he's ever been on. I think he needs to be coached by Larry brown for a while. all stars should be tradable.
Mike D’Antoni resigned as coach of the Knicks...... I'd guess that he got frustrated having to play Jeremy Lin.......... He wished he had more players like Marshmelo...........
To much pressure trying to coach in the BiG Apple. Coaches in other cities would hold on to their jobs until they were fired even if they loss 20 games in a row..... http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/new-york-knicks-coach-mike-dantoni-resigns-031412
Melo has always had pretty bad advanced stats, especially adjusted +/- (+/- where regression is used to adjust for teammates and opponents). He's offense is overrated and his defense is not good enough so I wouldn't rate him as one of the top 20 best players in the league. The same goes for Monta who's another guy who puts up awesome individual stats but it doesn't seem to improve the teams offensive rating. When it comes down to how many wins a player of his caliber adds to his team in a season I'd put him in the same category as Chris Bosh, not LeBron James.
my bet is the talk went like this.... its me or melo, and they picked melo.... look at the teams and how they played without him... Denver got better, New York played better while he was out. The closest thing to him I can come up with is the finals run that the 76ers made with AI and Brown. Great Talent to watch from afar... but wouldn't have him on my team.
What, this season? I agree he isn't 'the superstar' but he is a far shot from a trade piece either. .440 career fg%, roughly 54% TS, 80%FT, putting up between 20-25 points a game, on 6-7 rebounds and a handful of assists. He is far from a bad player. Even with a 30% usage rate he still manages to put 20+ PER, and thats on a team with Amare. STAT. The 6-11 PF who barely outrebounds him. We talk about Melo being a defensive liability, but has anyone here watched Amare play. I believe they should get rid of Amare. But the truth is, they are both untradable. Not because they don't want to get rid of them, but because nobody takes them. There are still doubts about Amare's microfractures, and his contract is uninsurable. No team wants to take that on. It's too costly for the risk, and he doesn't offset it with the 07-08 production anymore. 3 years of 16/7 at $20m. No thanks. I can offset those stats with 2/3 half decent guys in the forward on smaller minutes who will actually try. In fact, Maxiell and Jerebko will combine on those numbers over a game at PF, probably at greater efficiency, for a quarter of the cost. Melo? Same deal. $20 million a year for someone who doesn't add a whole heap. I mean, I like the guy. I think he has the ability (still) to be a scoring phenom. But he has never had whatever is needed to make it. As a result, he isn't worth the risk. Too much money, too much time. Trevor Ariza and Gerald Wallace look more attractive.
Melo in 2011/2012 season: FG%- 309th in the NBA eFG%- 333rd TS%- 264th 3P%- 186th FT%- 123rd Ast%- 85th Stl%- 244th Blk%- 228th PER- 67th Orating- 223rd WS/min- 147th Usage- 7th Therein lies the problem. And he's made roughly $100M in salary in the NBA since the 2003 draft. If he was at his career TS% of .543 this year, then he would rank 124th in the league, just behind Hamed Haddadi and tied with Klay Thompson. Grant Hill is scoring more efficiently than Melo this year. Rodrique Beaubois is putting him to shame.
We all watched as Melo and Amare made the move to the Knicks.We all thought it was money wasted. Maybe MSG sold tickets. Still they are better than us. Most here thought D`Antoni was in over his head. I bet LB4LB would love to sleaze his way back to NY now that Marbury is gone. Too bad that bridge is unrepairable.
Tonight the Knicks beat Portland by 42 points getting 72 points from the bench. Woodson limited Lin's shooting and gave Novak and JR Smith freedom to shoot from beyond the arc at will....and they responded going 13-24.
