Billy Goat wrote:moocow007 wrote:Billy Goat wrote:
Well you're going to have what looks to be another top 5 pick on the roster next year. Hernangomez who's sitting at a 57.5 TS% as a rookie. Porzingis obviously. Take away Anthony's shots(mostly mid range 2's) and disperse them among the younger guys and see what happens. Hell throw in Holiday there too- he deserves more shots and PT as well. What we do know now is that the offense with Melo getting the lions share of the looks and dominating the ball isnt working.
The system being blamed is a silly scapegoat. Melo dominates the ball on offense and his assist numbers have been putrid...and he doesnt have the TS% to justify having the ball that much especially if he isnt going to facilitate. Not sure how long this has to go one for folks to see hes a huge reason this franchise is stuck in the mud.
Huh? The system absolutely should be blamed every bit as Anthony. The best player Anthony has had to team with is half a season of Amare Stoudemire. When JR Smith is the next best player on the team for a good portion of Anthony's early years here ABSOLUTELY the system is the problem. Carmelo Anthony is not Lebron James. Folks seem to still be unable to realize that. Anthony has had crap teammates AND crap coaches AND crap front offices unable to put the type of players that around him that actually can offset what he does well and what he doesn't do well. Other than that one season when they got it right, what exactly has the front office down to help things? Are you expecting to be on the Lebron James level? What other star player could have made a team with the talent and coaching that the Knicks have thrown out there ESPECIALLY during the Phil Jackson era that would have been able to win anything? Tell me. And yet no one else is to blame but Anthony? Ludicrous.
This is a lot of deflection. Not to rehash the past but we all know how much the organization gave up for Melo and they're still paying the price of the trade with all the assets and picks lost.
What does that have to do with Anthony? This narrative that Anthony somehow is the GM or had so much pull that he can actually force grown men into trading for him is silly. It is. It really is. No one forced the Knicks to make that trade. And to be quite honest, that trade wasn't exactly lopsided even with the Knicks going the extra mile beyond what they apparently could have and still gotten Anthony (i.e. Masai Ujrii actually stated that he figured there was no harm in asking the Knicks...not Carmelo Anthony...the Knicks for that extra pick swap AND Mozgov...he said that he didn't expect them...the Knicks front office, not Carmelo Anthony, to agree but...hey, they agreed).
He's obviously not Lebron but he's paid like he is that caliber of player.
But again, what does that have to do with Anthony? Do you expect Anthony to say, "you know what guys, Lebron is better than me, so since the CBA has a cap on max salary, you shouldn't give me anywhere near what Lebron is forced to take because of the max salary limits?" Carmelo Anthony is paid what the Knicks (and the economy of the NBA) decided he's worth. If there were no max salary limit I'm sure Lebron James would be getting paid A LOT more than he is and A LOT more than Anthony. But he's not, but that has nothing to do with Anthony.
He dominates the ball. Guys that dominate the ball as wings as much as he does and are on max deals have to facilitate. Harden does, Westbrook does, Kawhi Durant always did etc.
So you want to crucify him because he's not on the same level as 2 guys that are favorites to win the MVP award this year AND another 2 guys that most consider to be among the top 5-6 players in the NBA? YOu just pointed to 5 of probably the top 6 guys in the NBA (in Lebron, Westbrook, Harden, Leonard and Durant).
But ok, let's take a look at the team and the system that those guys play in. Durant had Westbrook (who is himself already better than Anthony) and now has the Warriors team. Westbrook had Durant (see previous comment about Anthony). Leonard is on the best run organization in basketball in a system that is tailored around him...same with Harden. Anthony? He has had JR Smith as his longest/best running mate up until Porzingis the last year and change.
Melo never has. His shot selection has always been questionable at best. There's nothing other than him taking a bunch of shots that he does well. There's hardly any value in that either especially if they're not going in. He's an average rebounder, below average defender and a below average facilitator...
What do you mean Anthony never has? Anthony was one of the most dominant offensive players in the game. And offense DOES MATTER. The general consensus was that the "great package" that Anthony somehow convinced the Knicks to give up to get him wasn't the best package that the Nuggets could have gotten had Anthony been willing to go to any team. That tells you what the perceived value for Anthony was at the time. Anthony, with JR Smith as his "best man" helped lead the Knicks to their best season in over a decade and was the only player other than the one that won the MVP award to actually garner a 1st place vote for MVP that year. You're telling me someone like that wouldn't be valuable? So the notion that he never has had any value is just plain incorrect.
all while taking up a huge portion of the cap and a NTC. The coaches have changed, the players have changed, the results have not...its time to move on.
Again, Anthony's contract when factored against the actual "super max" contracts that players not of his caliber have and will be getting, is not as deadly as you present it to be. That NTC obviously doesn't help but that goes to my claim that the front office is every bit to blame as Anthony for the KNicks failures. No one forced Jackson to give Anthony that ridiculous NTC and yet Jackson did. Do you actually believe that Anthony was going to leave if he didn't get an NTC or that the NTC, which Anthony never had asked for previously, all of a sudden became a must have? Jackson idiotically did it to get Anthony to agree to take a few million less so he can sell it to the media and/or Dolan that he managed to get Anthony to sign for less than Max. That's all on Jackson being making a stupid decision.
Bottom line...the Knicks have no reason to simply dump Anthony for crap. You still need to be able to score points to win games (which apparently is something that folks may not be fully realizing). Any notion that Porzingis by himself with some help for Hernangomez and someone like Ntilinkina will be sufficient to put up points is crazy. Not to mention Anthony being able to deflect a lot of the blame and fingerpointing away from Porzingis as he develops. I don't get this thing where Anthony is being painted as the proverbial Anti-Christ here by Knick fans. But then again, I shouldn't be surprised since they did the same thing to Bernard King, then to Patrick Ewing, then to Stephon Marbury when those guys couldn't literally all by themselves lead the Knicks to anything in spite of the fact that none of them have ever been given the type of players around them to be allow them to do so given that they weren't better than some of the other players of their time that were clearly a lot better than they and who had much better teams.