Ray Allen vs Carmelo Anthony

[E-Balla]

So my question is, how do you see Carmelo Anthony stacking up to Ray Allen if he continues evolving his game into Paul Pierce? I could see them ending their careers as very similar players.

Probably still won't because he's leaving his prime and has lost value as a scorer. He's shooting less and passing a little more of course, which is a sound adaptation, but while it's useful in-season to the Knicks and a good thing to be doing, I don't really look at it as majorly meaningful in comparison to someone like Ray. We're at the usual phase for him. His game is good beyond three feet and inside the arc. His three is acceptable, though it's been up and down in his career and is sometimes a weapon. He's okay to solid at drawing fouls, but he's not finishing well for a guy his size or super-well for his position. The result is roughly average efficiency on what is still significant usage. That's...I mean it isn't BAD, especially on that team. But he's the improvements he's showing on D and as a playmaker aren't enough to overcome the deficit in his major focus role, which is volume scoring. He still doesn't compare to Ray because he's not as effective a playmaker and this year, as last season, he's considerably worse as a scorer.

TL;DR, he's taking good steps to making himself valuable to the team and the evolution is nice, but it doesn't help him versus Ray.

Thanks for the response.

If you're going by the stats this season, his shooting has been bad. His scoring hasn't been great. My feeling is that it takes time to return from an injury. His scoring will return. The most promising part is that he's leading us to wins despite his lackluster scoring by impacting the game in so many other ways. Carmelo is another player who has a Steph Curry like gravity effect for his teammates, albeit much less pronounced. No, I'm not saying Carmelo is close to Curry, but Porzingis repeatedly mentions how much easier the game becomes when he's on the court with Melo vs. without. His added passing ability is only going to open up more scoring opportunities for him going forward, and Melo never was especially reliant on his athleticism to begin with. I believe Melo has a few more excellent seasons of play ahead of him, and his alleged decline has been overstated.

He's averaging 22.5/8/5 on 56 TS (114 ORTG) since the Portland game (17 games) and while his consistency scoring the ball is a little below it's usual he's getting more consistent monthly. Still needs to start finishing and hopefully he finds his 3 ball. If day his overall game right now with his peak scoring game would rank over Ray but we haven't seen it yet and we definitely need to see it in the postseason before I blindly trust it.

[tsherkin]

So my question is, how do you see Carmelo Anthony stacking up to Ray Allen if he continues evolving his game into Paul Pierce? I could see them ending their careers as very similar players.

Probably still won't because he's leaving his prime and has lost value as a scorer. He's shooting less and passing a little more of course, which is a sound adaptation, but while it's useful in-season to the Knicks and a good thing to be doing, I don't really look at it as majorly meaningful in comparison to someone like Ray. We're at the usual phase for him. His game is good beyond three feet and inside the arc. His three is acceptable, though it's been up and down in his career and is sometimes a weapon. He's okay to solid at drawing fouls, but he's not finishing well for a guy his size or super-well for his position. The result is roughly average efficiency on what is still significant usage. That's...I mean it isn't BAD, especially on that team. But he's the improvements he's showing on D and as a playmaker aren't enough to overcome the deficit in his major focus role, which is volume scoring. He still doesn't compare to Ray because he's not as effective a playmaker and this year, as last season, he's considerably worse as a scorer.

TL;DR, he's taking good steps to making himself valuable to the team and the evolution is nice, but it doesn't help him versus Ray.

Thanks for the response.

If you're going by the stats this season, his shooting has been bad. His scoring hasn't been great. My feeling is that it takes time to return from an injury. His scoring will return. The most promising part is that he's leading us to wins despite his lackluster scoring by impacting the game in so many other ways. Carmelo is another player who has a Steph Curry like gravity effect for his teammates, albeit much less pronounced. No, I'm not saying Carmelo is close to Curry, but Porzingis repeatedly mentions how much easier the game becomes when he's on the court with Melo vs. without. His added passing ability is only going to open up more scoring opportunities for him going forward, and Melo never was especially reliant on his athleticism to begin with. I believe Melo has a few more excellent seasons of play ahead of him, and his alleged decline has been overstated.

His decline has only been overstated by those purporting that he cannot bounce back. He is coming off of unhealthy seasons amd surgery, so he will undoubtedly have an up and down season. He has found ways to improve his contribution even with reduced efficiency and he is amid the expected normalization streak right now. He isn't done, and he is a net-positive contributor. The only things he is not right now are top-tier scorer or offensive player... But even at his peak, there were always a couple of guys better than him at both in the league, so that is neither surprising nor new.

I said in the off-season and earlier this year that I expect a slow period from him and a bounceback period, and h will always be up and down because of how jumper-reliant he is, especially post-Denver. It is who he is as a player.

He's fine. New York is better for his presence.