Quote:
Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501
I read a great comment about Melo. Melo's game is to hold the ball while 4 guys watch. Melo doesn't just take a lot of shots. He holds the ball for a million years, then shoots. He's not a good passer. His assist % is astronomically low. His usage rate is off the charts high. And as you said, for the most part, doesn't play defense as much as he should. And even if he's, from what I hear, a good guy, he isn't a natural leader.
Say what you want about that supporting cast, but they looked really good when Jeremy Lin was at the point. And Lin isn't even that good. They won because Lin was creating shots for his teammates. Melo is never going to make teammates better. Which is why it's really hard to build the case that his teammates weren't good enough. Maybe they could be, but it's kind of hard to get teammates going when they don't touch the ball and it's kind of hard to run a set offense when it revolves around one guy holding on to the ball and draining the shot clock.
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I think many people forget this but Melo has been to the WC Finals with the Nuggets and it was a year that Melo, JR Smith, Chauncy Billups, Nene and Kenyon Martin all had 1000+ points for the season.
Billups had 17, Nene had 14, JR Smith had 15, Kenyon had 11, and Melo had 22 points per game.
4 guys had DOUBLE DIGITS in scoring averages for that season with "ball hog" Melo on the team.
Do you know how many 1000+ point scorers were on the Knicks last year besides Melo? One. And it was JR Smith.
That team had nobody and you can call Melo a possession eater all you want, but when he has some sort of semblance of NBA talent around him and not bum knees Amare and Andreas Bargnani and Fat Ray Felton, he can do more as a teammate.