Adrian Dantley or Carmelo Anthony

[penbeast0]

Career value. Both pure scoring SFs.

Dantley scored much more efficiently. Carmelo played almost 25% more games in a more recent era.

[Cavsfansince84]

I'd have Dantley about 15 or so spots higher. Melo has too many things I don't like him about him intangibles wise. AD had his weaknesses but I think overall he was a professional and scored like almost no one else(especially in his era). Also came very close to being co #1 on a title team(possibly fmvp).

[HeartBreakKid]

The weaknesses Dantley has Carmelo also has just usually to a lesser extent, but still exploitable. Dantley exceeds in his strengths more than Carmelo does by a lot, and I think on average a players strengths are usually more important than their weaknesses.

[MiamiBulls]

Carmelo Anthony.

Carmelo is the better version/less detractive version of Adrian Dantley. His deficiencies doesn't outright impede his teams from having strong competitive Offenses.

Denver Offenses - 2008: 11th Best, 2009: 7th Best, 2010: 3rd Best Offense, 2011: no.1 ranked Offense

2009 Playoffs
Nuggets Offense: +10 ORtg
Carmelo Anthony: 28pts 4asts per/75 +2.7% rTS

2010 Playoffs
Nuggets Offense: +9.5 ORtg
Carmelo Anthony: 28pts 3asts per/75 +2% rTS

2013 NYK's Offense: 3rd Best Offense
Carmelo Anthony: 31ppg per/75 +2.5% rTS

Carmelo has shown to have solid functionality with good playmakers(Andre Miller, Allen Iverson, Chauncey Billups, Jason Kidd) by his side.

As far as Dantley, here's a quick look at his Jazz offenses, with only 22-23 teams in the league during this stretch:

1980: -1.1 (15th)
1981: -2.1 (18th)
1982: -0.7 (13th)
1983: -3.5 (20th)
1984: +1.4 (9th)
1985: -4.6 (21st)
1986: -3.0 (20th)

Really unimpressive. The 84 season argument is interesting in that it stands out as an anomaly year in Dantley's career, but in the '84 Playoffs the Utah Jazz yielded a Playoff ORtg: -1.1

1984 Playoffs
Adrian Dantley: 28pts 3.6asts per/75 +3% rTS

It's the only year out of 7 in which he was part of an above-average Jazz offense in the Regular Season, and the offense was still only mediocre (+1.4).

Adrian Dantley impact on the Pistons neutral at best.

Pistons' Offense
1986: +1.8 ORtg
1987: +0.9 ORtg

In 88 Dantley misses 13 games and the offense is better without him:
+2.4 w/ Dantley
+3.2 w/out

In 89 Dantley plays 42 games, gets traded midseason, and the offense is better without him again:
108.8 ORtg w/ Dantley
113.4 ORtg w/out (Aguirre in his place)

[acheck13]

Can’t say I’m super familiar with the 80s Jazz teams, but wasn’t a large part of their inefficiency due to the outsized roles for Green and Griffith? Curious as to how Dantley would be responsible for that, even with mediocre playmaking and turn over economy.

[Owly]

Carmelo Anthony.

Carmelo is the better version/less detractive version of Adrian Dantley. His deficiencies doesn't outright impede his teams from having strong competitive Offenses.

Denver Offenses - 2008: 11th Best, 2009: 7th Best, 2010: 3rd Best Offense, 2011: no.1 ranked Offense

2009 Playoffs
Nuggets Offense: +10 ORtg
Carmelo Anthony: 28pts 4asts per/75 +2.7% rTS

2010 Playoffs
Nuggets Offense: +9.5 ORtg
Carmelo Anthony: 28pts 3asts per/75 +2% rTS

2013 NYK's Offense: 3rd Best Offense
Carmelo Anthony: 31ppg per/75 +2.5% rTS

Carmelo has shown to have solid functionality with good playmakers(Andre Miller, Allen Iverson, Chauncey Billups, Jason Kidd) by his side.

As far as Dantley, here's a quick look at his Jazz offenses, with only 22-23 teams in the league during this stretch:

1980: -1.1 (15th)
1981: -2.1 (18th)
1982: -0.7 (13th)
1983: -3.5 (20th)
1984: +1.4 (9th)
1985: -4.6 (21st)
1986: -3.0 (20th)

Really unimpressive. The 84 season argument is interesting in that it stands out as an anomaly year in Dantley's career, but in the '84 Playoffs the Utah Jazz yielded a Playoff ORtg: -1.1

1984 Playoffs
Adrian Dantley: 28pts 3.6asts per/75 +3% rTS

It's the only year out of 7 in which he was part of an above-average Jazz offense in the Regular Season, and the offense was still only mediocre (+1.4).

Adrian Dantley impact on the Pistons neutral at best.

Pistons' Offense
1986: +1.8 ORtg
1987: +0.9 ORtg

In 88 Dantley misses 13 games and the offense is better without him:
+2.4 w/ Dantley
+3.2 w/out

In 89 Dantley plays 42 games, gets traded midseason, and the offense is better without him again:
108.8 ORtg w/ Dantley
113.4 ORtg w/out (Aguirre in his place)

The thing is raw team level stuff to a single player is a pretty bad measure, it’s super crude, super noisy.

In terms of net impact:
For Carmelo
Raw on-off: In the sample 08-11 cited … +1.5. Not … “bad” but pedestrian.
In the playoff era cited 09-13: -0.5.
Googlesites 97-14 RAPM (which quite conveniently for him cuts out his weaker, hanging-on career phase) RS and playoff as I now understand it: 0.67 (219th) by no means in absolute terms bad … but even without the tug of his weaker later years, despite being on some good offensive teams I would say the evidence of net impact is doesn’t look that promising.
Citing full season team level Nuggets data for ’11 … is a touch iffy though they were 1st in offense around the trade though I don’t have date at the point of his last game … of course, it’s known that they seemed better with the package they got for him (improving significantly on defense), despite being pushed into the trade.

Conversely Dantley is highlighted on weaker teams …
But whilst sometimes negatively cited for notional impact …
ElGee’s free WoWYR table had him joint 100th (where ties are ranked at the average of the range (i.e. two people tied behind first would be 2.5th) with 4.3 on Prime WoWYR and joint 144 with 3.3 for career WoWYR of the players listed. Carmelo isn’t in this table (and fwiw, has better, more precise data, but would have included a like-for-like if available) … those numbers are though, for instance marginally behind fellow Piston Thomas for prime (4.6, =83rd) and quite far ahead for career (0.8, =448th).

I don’t know if there are "better" (or more widely accepted/respected) aggregate measures for Dantley’s impact.

The team level, to notional impact stuff seems a bit ad hoc but regarding the last spell …
’89 The “with Dantley” includes absences of Dumars and Mahorn (including a spell with both out simultaneously)
Dumars misses games 14, 33-44. Mahorn misses 30-39.
Aguirre misses Salley for 51-65
Detroit had 3 guards. Dumars was arguably the best at that point. Certainly, any guards coming in were a substantial downgrade.

[SeattleJazzFan]

it's tough for a couple reasons.

Dantley played in a much higher paced era where points were more plentiful and as a result scoring was easier to come by.
Carmelo played the bulk of his career and his prime in one of the slower paced/offense challenged eras in the modern nba.

otoh, Dantley's TS% was a major outlier for guys of his era - he was an unstoppable force - putting up 30 ppg for multiple seasons on mid-60s TS% - you just didn't see that kind of offensive volume on efficient scoring.

Conclusion: Dantley was the better scorer, Carmelo as a passer and rebounder was better - neither guy played much defense to speak of. gun to my head i go Dantley, but this could go either way.

[tsherkin]

Carmelo played the bulk of his career and his prime in one of the slower paced/offense challenged eras in the modern nba.

This is relevant primarily if you compare their raw efficiency numbers, but Dantley smokes him both in terms of relative numbers as well as deviation from league average. Mind that he was a 29.6 ppg, 63.2% TS guy on 120, 116, 117, 124, 120, 112 and 116 TS+ from 80-86. Melo topped out at 105 TS+ and was a 100 TS+ guy on his career, generally hovering around or below league average efficiency.

He had a really nice aesthetic if you didn't mind his 600-year-long isolations, but actually wasn't very a terribly efficiency scorer relative to his in-era peers, let alone next to someone like Dantley. He looked better in-role when he moved to more of a PF position with the Knicks at the end of his prime for a couple seasons, but he just didn't have it compared to the big-time scorers of his own era, let alone all-time.