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What if we could pluck peak Melo from 2013 and plug him into this Knicks team, sans Julius Randle. Assemble the starting lineup however you want.

Title favorites? Title contenders?

They get worse.

Bump

Melo sucks the souls of teams, but if he can stay in check and follow the game plan and let Brunson lead, they can definitely be contenders. The issue is he won't because to him everything is about him.

Him and Brunson would probably be redundant

Depends on how Melo fit into the culture. Julius does...despite not being the best at taking criticism ...but I dunno with Melo. If he did, he could be exactly what we need to keep teams from throwing as many bodies at Jalen, but I could also see him not fitting in at all.

champs this year

Peak Melo w/ today's spacing would be so much better than when he played (often without a real stretch big).

Melo always played his best with a floor general type of PG. Brunson is a good blend of scoring floor general PG. They’d probably fit really well together.

They’d be title contenders.

Brunson would be the best PG Melo will have ever played with in NY by a mile. Not to mention that was the best version of Melo in NY, who was a top 10 player and scoring champ that year.

He’d definitely have a problem with Brunson’s monster scoring games.

Remember how he handled Jeremy Lin’s 15 minutes of fame? Melo is just not a winner. Give him his 25-30 point games and he’s good.

Worse. Why would you add a career loser to this good squad?

I wouldn’t want Carmelo anywhere near a team like that, even at his best. The goal is to win games…

Adding peak Melo, they are contenders.

Brunson
Hart
Anunoby
Carmelo
Hartenstein

Melo was flawed, but the responses in this thread show just how far the narrative has swung in the opposite direction.

JimmyFromNz wrote:Melo was flawed, but the responses in this thread show just how far the narrative has swung in the opposite direction.

Definitely some overcorrection going on.

If Melo ain’t willing to acknowledge Brunson as the leader and ain’t willing to be a sidekick then it would just be Jeremy Lin type situation all over again

Add 2024 Randle to these Knicks and they very well could be champions.

With FIBA Melo they're maybe even the favorites.

uncleduck13 wrote:If Melo ain’t willing to acknowledge Brunson as the leader and ain’t willing to be a sidekick then it would just be Jeremy Lin type situation all over again

Agree any success is dependent on Melo and Brunson buying in.

But I can't see a comparison to Linsanity, Jeremy isn't in the same universe as Brunson as a player.

If anything Melo was vindicated with Jeremy, this is a very different proposition.

Melo replacing Randle definitely makes them better. Adding Melo with Randle definitely makes them worse.