Post#23 » by tsherkin » Sat Jul 9, 2022 12:17 am
Melo is an interesting study. He's a good example of how raw scoring volume is a horrifically bad way to evaluate a player, as he was inferior to what his scoring average suggested most of his career. His defensive shortcomings and then him NOT being an ATG wing playmaker were other problems with how much he wanted to have the ball.
And that's it more than anything. He was basically that era's version of Dominique Wilkins. Many people found him entertaining to watch, but he wasn't doing enough for his team to merit his usage. Melo was a very deliberate, slower iso player, and wasn't a particularly good passer. Like Nique, he had a short actual peak where his efficiency rose and his overall offensive impact was better. 13, 14 with New York, he looked way better than he had at any other point in his career. He was surely not the most important player on his Denver teams, but he slotted nicely onto the Knicks.
Very skilled, but raised with the wrong approach to the game. Too slow in his isos, too much emphasis on the wrong kinds of shots, very much like an 80s SF in profile, which made him underperform his actual tools. With that frame, his first step and his scoring skills, he should have been far better, particularly on a team that ran as much as did the Nuggets. And he had many, many struggles in the playoffs as well, though one has to pay at least some heed to his competition. As a 19 year-old rookie, he ran into the 04 Wolves, then he hit the title Spurs, the Clippers (still stank), title Spurs (scored quite well), WC champ Lakers (first of 3 straight Finals appearances), and then he had pretty good postseasons overall in his last two full years with Denver (though he shot like dog crap in 09 in the WCFs, he was at the line so much that it was mostly OK). He was also dogcrap in the elimination game against the Jazz in 2010, outplayed by Joey Graham.
Goerge and Butler are already both dramatically superior defenders.
2019 aside, George hasn't put up the volume we saw from Melo, but his defense is way better and he moves the ball a lot more effectively. You'll see some varying looks statistically. He looks better from WS/48, but similar or maybe a shade worse from OBPM. His 2019 season looks quite similar to Melo's New York peak. But again, Melo's a career -1 or worse DBPM kinda guy and even shouldering a larger offensive burden, George is around +1. And of course you can see him using his length and mobility to frustrate people on that end of the floor, where you could more regularly see Melo giving up on plays than anything else on D.
Butler has never really approached Melo in terms of scoring volume in the RS, or in any PS prior to this one. Again, a better defender, and pretty much all the other stuff favors him as far as average OBPM, DBPM, WS/48, etc, etc. He is a good example of how a player should play unless they are an absolutely locked-in, transcendent talent. And often even then. Melo was definitely an example of someone whose game was shaped by a lot of the misperceptions which floated out of the 90s and early 2000s about iso play and hero ball and all that. Butler scores less but contributes more to winning with what he does.
Other notes.
Melo was a roughly 2.0 - 2.5 OBPM guy based on Ben Taylor's version. Hovered around 3.0 BPM, and around -0.5 DAPM for most of his career. He was a little under 1.0 ScoreVal for most of his Denver career, bottoming out at 0.2 in 2009, then 1.7 and 1.2 in 13 and 14 with New York (best two seasons of his career in that regard, a bit ahead of 1.2 in 2006). -0.5 to 0.2 PlayVal, Passer Rating around 5; unsurprisingly, a weak playmaker. It was always a hole in his game, and a major reason he wasn't more of an impact player on offense. TS+ of 100 across his career, had several seasons at 104 or 105. BoxCreation around 5 - 5.5 for most of his career.
On passing alone, the past two years make Butler a more appealing player than Melo, coupled to the fact that his career average is Melo's peak in TS+, and that defense. Butler's been 7.5 and 8.8 Passer Rating (which is roughly scaled 1-10), and 7.7 and 9.7 Box Creation, 1.8 and 2.3 PlayVal, 4 and 4.4 OBPM and 4.3 and 5.2 BPM these past couple seasons.
You can look at things differently prior to now, but this is also his 5th season at 4.0 OBPM or better, and Melo only managed that in New York 3 times. George, offensively anyway, looks like Melo in terms of raw OBPM and his 2019 looks like Melo's peak. George, of course, has health issues on top of other things. When he's healthy, however, his passing is better than Melo's, his defense is better than Melo's, none of which should surprise anyone who has watched him. Outside of 2019, however, he's also a less effective scorer. But he makes up for it in those other ways, which makes for an interesting argument.
Ultimately, Butler and George make more sense once you divorce yourself from the idea that the only way a player can be a good focal offensive player is with ultra high-volume scoring. Some players can get away with it, but it usually isn't the best strategy. In fact, it is rarely so unless they are properly incredible, and/or can supplement with significant playmaking. So it worked for Jordan once his team was at a competitive level. It worked for Kobe under similar circumstances, though both ran into issues where they overshot (which is a traditional risk with high-volume guys), and of course Lebron. But there are other paths to success and Melo is a good example of tools misapplied. A shame, really, because he was quite talented. And of course, the aesthetic of his game was nice for the common fan, because he certainly deployed a wide range of moves, which they commonly misperceive as better than the guys who do just a couple of things which keep working.
Melo was an interesting one. He got too much in the way of comparisons to Lebron and too much inappropriate kudos during his heyday, so he got a lot of splashback here because that's how it goes. But yeah, he was basically a Nique-level player. Not quite as exciting, but in terms of raw efficacy, that's basically what we're talking about with Melo. And that's a good player. That's not really a guy you wanna pin title hopes on if he's your focal player, but he was good enough to put together a quality team that was able to be in the playoffs even in a fairly brutal WC, and that's not nothing.
