Prime Time: Melo vs PG13

[BodieB]

George is a terrific player but this seems disrespectful to Melo.

It’s not. It’s all perception. Melo just got more press and media attention.

Melo was maybe a top 10 player for 1-2 NBA seasons at most. People don’t realize this. Meanwhile George was top 10:for about 4 seasons and is a 2 way players who is better than Melo at most basketball related activities.

Nah, unconvinced. This board has short term memory issues. Most of these posters in here, maybe even you, that are praising PG were the same one's going off on him disappearing in the bubble up and until he had some good games against the Jazz without Kawhi.

Aside from that, he's played on stacked rosters for pretty much his whole career but most of the credit he gets comes from his series against the Heat when he was on the Pacers. I'm not even going to break that series down and what happened in it, but anyone that actually watched it knows that if Bosh was able to play consistently that series would have been over in 5.

[The_Hater]

George is a terrific player but this seems disrespectful to Melo.

It’s not. It’s all perception. Melo just got more press and media attention.

Melo was maybe a top 10 player for 1-2 NBA seasons at most. People don’t realize this. Meanwhile George was top 10:for about 4 seasons and is a 2 way players who is better than Melo at most basketball related activities.

Nah, unconvinced. This board has short term memory issues. Most of these posters in here, maybe even you, that are praising PG were the same one's going off on him disappearing in the bubble up and until he had some good games against the Jazz without Kawhi.

Aside from that, he's played on stacked rosters for pretty much his whole career but most of the credit he gets comes from his series against the Heat when he was on the Pacers. I'm not even going to break that series down and what happened in it, but anyone that actually watched it knows that if Bosh was able to play consistently that series would have been over in 5.

You’ll have to explain my short memory issues? Did I forget a bunch or great playoff runs of Melo led teams? Am I wrong that he was a sub-par defender and a poor distributor in his prime? Did I overlook all those 1st team, All NBA accolades (there were none btw)

Melo was a terrific volume scorer and will be in the HOF after he retires but he was also overrated for a majority of his career and people who liked him are just continuing to hold onto that perception today. And that stems from him making a huge name for himself in his one college season and playing a majority of his career in NY.

[TTP]

George is a terrific player but this seems disrespectful to Melo.

It’s not. It’s all perception. Melo just got more press and media attention.

Melo was maybe a top 10 player for 1-2 NBA seasons at most. People don’t realize this. Meanwhile George was top 10:for about 4 seasons and is a 2 way players who is better than Melo at most basketball related activities.

Nah, unconvinced. This board has short term memory issues. Most of these posters in here, maybe even you, that are praising PG were the same one's going off on him disappearing in the bubble up and until he had some good games against the Jazz without Kawhi.

Aside from that, he's played on stacked rosters for pretty much his whole career but most of the credit he gets comes from his series against the Heat when he was on the Pacers. I'm not even going to break that series down and what happened in it, but anyone that actually watched it knows that if Bosh was able to play consistently that series would have been over in 5.

If PG has played on stacked rosters his whole career, wouldn’t the fact that he’s outperformed his teammates by +7.2 when he’s on the floor for his career (and +12.0 in the playoffs) be even more impressive?

If Melo had worse teammates, why were they frequently better when he was off the floor?

Hint: the worse your teammates are, the easier it should be for you to outperform them.

[Danny1616]

PG13.

Melo was a bit inefficient and wasn't good defensively.

[jokeboy86]

Melo has that Iverson glow whereas they're both obviously HOF players but there are easily several other players from their era who you would take over them who were better and you would take if you wanted your team to win. (For the record I've never had Iverson as a top 5 player in the league either at any point in his career even with his 1st team All-NBA appearances but that's just me.) And you also have to take into consideration the markets they got big in and played the bulk of their careers(east coast) and their cultural popularity which is why people get up in arms if you suggest someone is better than them. If you put this poll on twitter, ESPN, or NBA.com Melo easily wins this simply off the popularity of his name alone.

[JN61]

Worth of mentioning is George got these numbers with massive help from Westbrook. Look up how muc Westbrook assisted him that year; 2 made 2 point field goals and 1.7 3 pointers per game. 3.7/9.2 fgm were assisted by Westbrook. That's massive 40% shots assistd he made by Westbrook. And if you include all attempts it is; 5 2pt fga and 4.3 3pt fga. So Westbrook assisted 9.3 out of 21 fga. Which is 44% of shots assisted by Westbrook.

In my opinion Melo was clearly superior. Georges MVP year is byproduct of Westbrook elevating the game of George. OKCs offfense was way less turnover prone and way higher AST% when Westbrook was on the court. Indicating George struggled to lead the offense on his own.

"Point Guards create scoring opportunities and a team is worse when it's $40m PG sits".

Profound analysis.

Point being it was still Westbrook who ran the team but he took step back on scoring in order to help more efficient George shoot more and damn did it help when Westbrook draw every defender to him and kicked it back to wide open George. Shame both players got hurt. That OKC team could have made some noise on the 2nd round. Especially if roberson didn't get hurt a year prior...

Meanwhile Melo was the leader of his team and did some noise in the playoffs in comparison.

Lastly way more in-depth reasoning to my take than you have done here...

[EArl]

I think Melo was a better offensive player, but not by a huge margin. PG was definitely the better defender. I would give the edge to Pandemic P for his defense.

[dhsilv2]

Your stats are also using Melo’s stats when he’s way past his prime while Paul George is still in his prime. When Melo was in his prime, Paul George couldn’t guard him.


This is what Prime Melo did to him.


Paul George’s 19 PPG isn’t even close.


Paul George always had a better supporting cast than Melo as well. So using team wins is pointless.

PG barely played as a rookie in 2011. He was not a starter so I doubt many of those points came against PG.

PG started coming in to his game by his 3rd year (2013) but even that was not his prime.

Please post the 14 box scores and explain how they are relevant since this thread says in their prime. PG was not in his prime.

You were posting stats that had Melo way past his prime and thought they were relevant

Paul George’s defense was at his peak in 2013 and 2014 where he was named to an all NBA defensive teams in back to back seasons but yet he couldn’t guard prime Melo. So.. yeah. So much for his defense.

WTF? George was in DPOY discussion in 2019, not 2013 and 2014. This has got to be trolling at this point.

[dhsilv2]

Melo was unguardable in his prime. Could never say the same for play off P.

yep you dont use the word unguardable with playoff p you dont know him well. hes just a great athlete with a smooth jumpshot. thats it. melo was truly special although his defense was garbage. his offense was lebron's level.

Melo's passing is horrible...he was a tier below lebron as a scorer with 1/10 the handle and 1/1000th the passing and court vision.

[TwoStarz]

Worth of mentioning is George got these numbers with massive help from Westbrook. Look up how muc Westbrook assisted him that year; 2 made 2 point field goals and 1.7 3 pointers per game. 3.7/9.2 fgm were assisted by Westbrook. That's massive 40% shots assistd he made by Westbrook. And if you include all attempts it is; 5 2pt fga and 4.3 3pt fga. So Westbrook assisted 9.3 out of 21 fga. Which is 44% of shots assisted by Westbrook.

In my opinion Melo was clearly superior. Georges MVP year is byproduct of Westbrook elevating the game of George. OKCs offfense was way less turnover prone and way higher AST% when Westbrook was on the court. Indicating George struggled to lead the offense on his own.

"Point Guards create scoring opportunities and a team is worse when it's $40m PG sits".

Profound analysis.

Point being it was still Westbrook who ran the team but he took step back on scoring in order to help more efficient George shoot more and damn did it help when Westbrook draw every defender to him and kicked it back to wide open George. Shame both players got hurt. That OKC team could have made some noise on the 2nd round. Especially if roberson didn't get hurt a year prior...

Meanwhile Melo was the leader of his team and did some noise in the playoffs in comparison.

Lastly way more in-depth reasoning to my take than you have done here...

Now ask yourself, why is one player more assisted than the other. Let’s ignore that one may have had a better PG (Melo played with AI and Billups), and let’s focus on how each gets his points.


I’m no PG fan, but he can attack much quicker than Melo whether that be due to ability or will, it’s true. Melo is a ball stopper. He learned somewhere along his journey that iso buckets are worth more than what they are worth…2’s or maybe a 3. Pg can actually catch and shoot and if I recall correctly, Melos catch and shoot with Westbrook as his PG were atrocious. Melo recently reinvented himself cause he got booted from the league. Still an inefficient volume scorer.

Melo most definitely modeled his game towards Kobe. But he forgot the winning part.

Bad post is bad post, not surprised though.

[TwoStarz]

Lol someone said prime Kawhi vs prime Melo AND he/she/they would take Melo. I. AM. DEAD.

Man the collective IQ of this board sometimes worries me.

There are a lot of intelligent posters though, kudos to you guys

[Mujahydeen]

Meanwhile Melo was the leader of his team and did some noise in the playoffs in comparison.

Melo won 3 Playoff series in 18 years. His playoff resume is getting regularly shut down on 50% TS or below and losing in 1st rounds.

[F N 11]

I had some rough times with Melo but this argument is disrespectful to Melo. Melo was leading Denver to playoffs every year and took Knicks to playoffs as soon as he got here even being a 1 dimensional guy. People need to go back and watch Melo y’all misinformed.

[toodles23]

triple post

[toodles23]

triple post

[toodles23]

Melo was unguardable in his prime. Could never say the same for play off P.

He guarded himself extremely well. He was a terrible playoff performer. The only thing he was good at was scoring, but in the playoffs his efficiency was an awful 51.3 TS%.

This isn't even close, PG is better by far. PG is the better offensive player - he's by far the better playoff scorer, is a clearly better passer and playmaker, and blows Melo out of the water defensively. Melo doesn't have any case whatsoever here.

I watched Melo's whole career and never understood the hype. He would bust out a couple of flashy, impressive moves every game which I guess is why people loved him so much (ignoring that those great moves usually resulted in a mediocre shot), but for the most part he was heavily reliant on his jab step midrange game and dribble pullups, which given the fact that he was only a 41% midrange shooter for his career was not a good thing. He was also a terrible finisher around the rim, from 2004 through 2017 he only shot 59% at the rim which is mediocre even for a guard, and for genuinely awful for a 6'7" 240 pound forward.

He could throw great passes every once in a while but 95% of the time he had major tunnel vision and terrible court mapping which seriously capped his potential as an offensive player. Not to mention his defense which he didn't give a **** about and rarely even tried.

Melo all day. The West was a different beast back then. PG ain't taking those teams any further. For most of Melo's prime, JR Smith was his second option.

Lmao what? JR was never his second option. Every year in Denver he either played with Andre Miller, Allen Iverson, or Chauncey Billups (who was the best player on those 09 and 10 teams, by the way). This isn't even mentioning a host of good role players like Marcus Camby, Nene, Kenyon Martin, Birdman, etc. The only years of his career JR was the second scoring option were 2013 and 2014, but both of those years Tyson Chandler was on the team who was easily better than JR.

[random_hero891]

I think this comes down to what coast the voter is on, I grew up east coast watching George do incredible things for the Pacers, subsequently, I didn't watch a lot of Denver games because they were on too late for me, I didn't really watch any of prime Anthony. Both are great players that you could make very realistic "What If" episodes about.

[Pelly24]

I'll go with PG by a slight margin, but really he hasn't been as consistent as some people like to think.

[trickshot]

Melo is your typical 2000s scorer who is great but somehow overrated in equal measure. This is a good totally not disrespectful comparison or landslide in any way. Maybe it's the iso scoring hype of the era that inflated their standing beyond their actual impact. He never really did anything resume wise or numbers wise to make it a no-brainer. Having said all that Melo was actually the better player imo but I'll take PG13. You're not winning with either as your 1st option, might as well go with the more versatile, more portable two way option. George might even be a better 2nd option than Melo is a 1st option.

[Pelly24]

Melo was unguardable in his prime. Could never say the same for play off P.

yep you dont use the word unguardable with playoff p you dont know him well. hes just a great athlete with a smooth jumpshot. thats it. melo was truly special although his defense was garbage. his offense was lebron's level.

Melo's passing is horrible...he was a tier below lebron as a scorer with 1/10 the handle and 1/1000th the passing and court vision.

I do think LeBron had a better handle, but Melo had a wicked crossover from what I remember, o go along with a great first step and a lot of strength.