The Melo effect: Is Carmelo Anthony really the superstar that he is made out to be?

There is a hush in the Big Apple these days. It’s not like the New York Knicks were the best team in the NBA, but when your team goes from championship caliber play to downright shambles in the space of a single off-season it is bound to raise a few eye-brows. Few, in this case, because ineptitude is as synonymous with the New York Knicks as scoring was with Wilt Chamberlain. It is almost as if the Knicks play well, then wake up from their stupor and realize what they are doing is too good to be true and screw it up all over again. This season, however, even the performances that make the Knicks resemble at least as a competent NBA team and not its D-league affiliate, have been few and far in between.

The Knicks have a history of dysfunctional and self-sabotaging decisions, which may well be the subject of a new article altogether. This article however is supposed to focus on Carmelo Anthony. Analyzing a player without analyzing his franchise may not be a logical decision, but doing so in a single article given the Knicks’ record of idiosyncrasies will put an unnecessary amount of strain on the concept of a word count.

Carmelo Anthony was drafted as the 3^rd overall pick in the 2003 NBA draft, the draft which featured LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh among others. Anthony and James were locked up in the debate for the No.1 draft pick for the duration of the season until LeBron got picked first by the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Billed as an immediate superstar and a franchise player right from draft day, Anthony arrived in Denver with a humongous amount of expectations for a rookie. Denver was a middling NBA franchise with a small market and floundering attendance numbers. Anthony was immediately thrust into the franchise player role, a role very few had donned in the Nuggets’ history.

Now Carmelo Anthony was always talented and all his scouting reports said nothing to the contrary. An immensely proficient scorer, with an exceptional mid-range game, he had a knack for scoring points and that is pretty much all the NBA scouts are looking for from young players making the leap from prep to pros. He joined the Nuggets as a member of a lottery team coming off a 17-65 record and immediately repaid the faith by leading them to a 43-39 record. The Nuggets kept improving throughout Anthony’s tenure with the Nuggets, posting a better winning percentage almost each year right up until his subsequent trade to the Knicks.

That is supposed to be a win-win situation for any team which is a mediocre franchise; continuous improvement. But if you acquire a franchise player, regular season ceases to matter. The team’s success is gauged by the post season performance, something that has historically been lacking in both the NBA teams that Anthony has been a part of.

Take the Nuggets for example – right from Anthony’s first season to his trade in 2011, the Nuggets got eliminated in the first round of the Western Conference in every season except 2008-2009, where they were eventually schooled by the Lakers. That is not supposed to happen when you have a Top-5 player playing on your team. Superstars win matches, particularly the playoff ones. Anthony always seemed to fall a bit short every season. The Nuggets were competent and consistent enough to post a winning record and a good seed every year, but somehow could never muster enough gas to win when it mattered.

Although Anthony cannot be blamed completely for the Nuggets failing to advance past the first round, it did point out a few glaring weaknesses in his game, weaknesses that still exist. Anthony is and always will be one of the best scorers in the league. He is routinely among the top 3 in points scored per game which means that he can do the most important task in a basketball game well and better than 90% of the league. But Anthony is a liability on defense, slow on rotations and taking unnecessary gambles while guarding opposition players.

Defensive lapses can be ignored to an extent. Not everyone can be Scottie Pippen on the defensive end, much less a player like ‘Melo, but there is a precedent that needs to be set when it comes to the effort your star player is giving on the floor, and if he does not play hard enough then the rest of the team simply runs out of juice. That was the difference between all the Bulls teams of the Michael Jordan era and the others, because on any given night, if Michael Jordan was on the floor you could be sure that he would be playing the hardest whether the Bulls were down by 10 or up.

Such kind of halfhearted efforts may go unnoticed in the regular season but when it comes to the playoffs, such mistakes can well be the difference between a one point win and a one point loss. Also Anthony has always been a volume scorer. He routinely puts up close to 20 shots a game, sometimes above 30. Now in an average NBA game with up to 90 possessions, if 33% of your possessions are being used by a single player, it leads to a stagnant offense, non-existent ball rotation and heavy isolation plays all of which are equal to inefficient basketball.

Anthony is an erratic rebounder, an attribute which directly co-relates to how hard he is playing on that particular night. That aside, Anthony is a legitimate superstar and a max-contract player, much like LeBron James or Kobe Bryant. Anthony was traded to the New York Knicks in 2011 well before the trade deadline. The Denver Nuggets received Wilson Chandler, Raymond Felton, Danilo Gallinari and Timofey Mozgov, while the Knicks got a 2014 first-round draft pick, the Warriors’ 2012 second-round pick, the Warriors’ 2013 second-round pick and $3 million in cash. The Nuggets basically rebuilt their entire roster with a single trade and acquired future trade pieces in the form of Danilo Galinari, the Warriors picks and the 2014 Knicks draft pick, which looking at the current abysmal record of the Knicks could end up becoming a high pick in one of the most loaded drafts in NBA history.

Carmelo Anthony #7 of the New York Knicks celebrates his game winning three pointer against as Luol Deng #9 of the Chicago Bulls looks on at Madison Square Garden on April 8, 2012 in New York City.

The Knicks already had Amare Stoudemire and by acquiring Anthony they wanted to launch their own version of the Miami Heat, at least that was what it looked like until it all went so horribly wrong. Stoudemire suffered an injury, and became a shell of his former explosive self. Anthony and Stoudemire never could manufacture anything on the court, routinely getting in each other’s way and playing little defense.

The offense that Stoudemire thrived in, in Phoenix Suns, was not possible with Anthony and his ball-hogging and the Knicks had no point guard who could execute Mike D’Antoni’s fast paced offense. With Stoudemire’s crumbling body and shoddy game, it was up to Anthony to lead the Knicks but he came up short again.

The Knicks probably played their best basketball of the D’Antoni-Melo era when Melo was injured and Jeremy Lin was at the helm. Anthony did not like the offensive schemes that D’Antoni operated with, which only hastened his departure from New York.

Amid all this, and considering Melo’s role in the D’Antoni sacking, he developed an image of being a “coach-killer”, and that is bad for any superstar trying to win a championship. The Knicks played lights out last season, with Melo suddenly rejuvenated by the departure of D’Antoni and the rest of the team performing like a unit, as they went on a roll winning games and instilling hope in a very rabid fan base that was almost on the verge of giving up on the team. They lost to the Pacers in the Conference semi-finals but everyone was hopeful that this team could finally live up to its potential and dethrone the Heat as the top team in the conference.

Fast forward to the 2013-2014 season and everything that can go wrong for a team has gone wrong for the Knicks. It’s cross town rivals, the Brooklyn Nets went into a slump, righted the ship and now are a mid-level playoff team, which is good enough since they are coming off major roster changes, dealing with injuries to key players and have a Head Coach who has no previous coaching experience, assistant or otherwise.

None of those factors matter to the Knicks. Barring an injury to Tyson Chandler at the beginning of the season when the Knicks conveniently pinned all their losses on the absence of their defensive lynchpin, the Knicks have looked lug-less throughout the season. When the second best back-court player of the team resorts to idiotic shenaniganism like untying opponent shoe-laces twice, the attitude of the team is called into immediate question. Top that with the starting point guard getting charged with arms possession and possibly facing a jail term and you have a recipe for disaster.

Melo has played well throughout this season. Even in losses, which have been too many and too embarrassing to count, Melo has performed remarkably. But the fact is that Anthony’s on-court demeanor clearly suggests a “whatever” approach. This season has been pathetic for him and his team as a whole and with the Knicks currently out of the playoff picture this could well be the last season when Anthony is a part of the Knicker-knackers.

The question is, is Anthony worth all the money that will be thrown at him once he hits free-agency? To compare, let’s look at his main rival, LeBron James, who is a 2-time champion, 4-time MVP and someone a team would not think twice before giving a max-contract. In comparison, Anthony has nothing to show on his resume except for All-Star selections and scoring titles. For a 29-year-old superstar with championship aspirations that does not bode well. The fact remains that Anthony’s championship window is shrinking, and shrinking fast.

There is no doubt that Carmelo Anthony is a max-contract player. Any player that can go out and score 25-27 a night on a regular basis is worth the big bucks, but he has a lot of catching up to do if he wants to give any credentials to his already dwindling legacy. Personal achievements aside, the fact is that an NBA career is and will always be measured in terms of the number of rings the player has won. That is why Jordan is the greatest of all time and that is why John Stockton in spite of being arguably the best point guard to play the game is never mentioned in the same breath as Magic Johnson. Championships are the ultimate barometer for defining legacies. It took LeBron James 10 years to get the monkey off his back and it has taken Carmelo Anthony even longer.

Whether Melo decides to stay in the Big Apple or decides to leave, it is time he gets over inept team-mates and dysfunctional management. He has to take it upon himself to expect and dictate terms in whichever franchise he chooses to go to when he becomes a free agent. Otherwise he will just be a name in the long list of names that proved championship busts.

Carmelo Anthony is in his prime and possibly at the top of his powers. There is only so much you can do before Father Time catches up. It is all the more important for Melo to prove his doubters wrong before his game flounders and his output reduces due to lack of physical ability rather than lack of effort. It is time to start over, whether he does it with a small market team with good management or the most valued franchise with the most ridiculous one is a matter of choice.