He was Melo's coach when Melo was a rookie and second year...
Radio Colorado Network's Dino Costa thought calling Melo as a franchise player/ superstar is a reach and Bzdelik agrees.
Hit on point and what I've been saying about Melo about:
- Melo only cares about himself
- Not at all about winning
http://www.girlsandsports.com/firegeorg ... k-Clip.mp3
Costa: Melo is a nice player, but to call him an elite player, one of the players in the NBA that's really the franchise type player, I'm reluctant to go that far because it's just a lot of things about this guy that just don't make sense to me and don't add up... and when they're trying to attach a leadsership label to this kid, I think that is insulting almost on a couple of different levels. But you read about things with the Nuggets. Just put Melo specifically, would you care to comment at all about his career up to this point in time and what you're seeing and what you saw when you coached him?
Bzdelik: Sure. I'll be very candid with you. I'll tell you this one story. I like Carmelo, I like him as a young man. When we sit down and talk with him, he's a good person. He is. But... here's the but.
I remember one day, I was sitting in my office with him and we were going with a film cuz I did it individually with him. And I said to him and I was showing to him, 'Carmelo look at... you don't defensive rebound, you don't defend, you don't run the court defensively, you're a one-way runner, you have to share the ball'... and I said 'you know, these are the things that will help you individually and your team get to the next level'... and his response to me was, 'coach, my game's good enough' and I said, 'well if that's the attitude you're gonna take then you'll never be all that you can be more what your team be all they can be.' And until he gets it and I told him I said...
'Carmelo, one day they're gonna fire me, probably really soon, you know that, I know that, the media knows that, the fans know that. Hopefully one day you'll look back on this conversation and say, 'you know what coach Bz was right'.
In other words, right now he's a "typical NBA player" and that's Pat Riley's using that phrase and I learned it from him. Typical NBA players who just worry about them, their own points, their own game. And they're other typical players like Tim Duncan, for example, who cares greatly about just doing one thing: winning. Hitting open men, defending, rebounding, those kinds of things and they're very few these typical players in the NBA.
Costa: Well said, I think that pretty much sums it up, coach. Thanks so much. Continue success, we'll talk with you down the road and thanks for your time.
Bzdelik: Thank you, Dino. Bye bye.
Source: http://www.denverstiff.com
I agree emphatically with this. I hope these typical NBA players and the player fans can lock themselves up in a room and play video game NBA Live/ 2K as them and so they can score 40-50 ppg because it's all they care about. Being in posters with jaw dropping dunks and score 50 pts > winning... they should all worship themselves. Am sick of Carmelo... I'd swap Melo for Rose straight up although Rose is not proven in anyway... I'll do it. But Bulls are a smart organization, they won't do it in a million years.
Melo's talent cannot be hated... it's his approach to winning. I have to repeat this, if Carmelo cares so much about winning as he does on Team USA, no way he's not gonna defend. Although Karl doesn't help and doesn't have the proper system in place with streetball, it's the urge within one person when it comes to winning that everything else will automatically come. In short, if you care about winning, if you play with defenseless Europeans as your teammates and European coaches who don't know defense... it doesn't matter, you will still automatically play defense... because you want to win in the worst way.
Why can Melo want to win on Team USA and don't want to win on the Nuggets? Because if he really wants to win on the Nuggets, he'll defend, no question about it. IF he GENUINELY wants to win in the worst way, there's no way he'd not defend or show up the way he has most of his Nugget career.
This is frustrating because Carmelo's talent cannot be hated on... it's too good. But why when it comes to the Nuggets he doesn't give 100% just as much as he demands the team to give him 100%?