Round 4: Is Carmelo Anthony an Elite Level Player?

Back in March, as a kind of experiment to see just how juiced I could get in head to head combat with a Carmelo Anthony detractor, I was a guest critic on the blog of David Friedman, a very experienced basketball commentator whose mega blog is 20secondtimeout.blogspot.com. I bring this heated debate back to (1)Get us through the dog days of the off-season and (2)To partly make up for me being bogged down in a huge real estate project, which is keeping me away from Nuggets 1 lately.

Enjoy the fight. Here is Round 4:

At 5:08 AM, David Friedman said...

DAVID FRIEDMAN:

Your system is not unique. It is called a "linear weights" system, which is a fancy way of saying "add up the good stuff (assists, rebounds, etc.) and subtract the bad stuff (turnovers in your system; some systems also use fouls committed and missed shots)." The problem with such systems in general is how much value to assign to each category. It is very easier to tinker with such a system until one comes up with the result that one desires. I am NOT saying that this is what you did or that you did it on purpose. I am just saying that "stat heads" do not have a very high opinion of linear weights systems as measures.

Obviously, you have a very high opinion of Melo; your account of his career and how it compares to MJ and others, though, contains the very bias of which you accuse others.

Yes, the Nuggets improved from 17 to 43 wins after adding Melo. They also added Andre Miller and Marcus Camby played 72 games instead of 29. Melo hardly accounted for a 26 game improvement by himself. Some people would argue that point guard and center are the two most important positions, so Miller and Camby had a lot to do with the team's improvement.

Yeah, the Bulls were 30-52 in MJ's second season--you left out the slight detail that he missed 64 games due to a broken foot and that the team limited his minutes when he came back near the end of the season. Think that might have had something to do with the team's record? MJ did manage to set a single game playoff scoring record with 63 points against the eventual champion Boston Celtics that year. Is there a comparable achievement on Melo's postseason resume?

By the way, although the internet was not around (or at least in public use) in MJ's early years, plenty of writers did criticize MJ for scoring too much and they did say that he could not lead a team to a title playing the way that he did. On the other hand, polls of NBA players indicated that he was the most feared player for both taking the last shot and guarding someone who is taking the last shot. MJ had some flaws early on but he was a much more dominant performer on both ends of the court than Melo is. Detroit had the "Jordan Rules." Is anyone devising "Melo Rules"? Denver is never in the playoffs long enough for an opponent to have to worry about such things.

First you say that Melo improved the team by 26 games but then you say that the Nuggets' status has not changed much. Which is it? Magic Johnson came to a talented team and turned them into champions. Larry Bird came to a bad team and turned them into contenders and then champions (the Celtics also added McHale and Parish eventually).

Whether or not Denver is a "basketball" town is irrelevant. If Melo were an elite player and he transformed Denver into a contending team than I'm sure that the city would be juiced about him and the team.

I don't think that anyone is biased against Melo because of his age. Amare came straight out of high school and is considered a top player.

I have not looked into the backgrounds of each of the All-Star and All-NBA players but I am willing to bet that several of them came from backgrounds just as impoverished as Melo's. James came from a single parent home, for one. The difference between Melo and some other players is that he does not seem to have completely left those days behind him--i.e., the "stop snitching" fiasco and the "punch and run" at MSG are just two examples of his questionable judgement.

Despite receiving a lot of criticism, Iverson has won an MVP and made numerous All-NBA teams, so it is not logical to suggest that Melo's background is holding him back in this regard. Clearly, it has not hurt Iverson.

The reason that Denver has not been great despite having Iverson and Melo is that the team is poor defensively. I predicted as much when "Nuggets Noise" asked me what I thought of the deal right after it happened. I thought that just based on sheer talent that the team might be able to finally get out of the first round--if presented with a favorable matchup--but that defensive deficiencies would preclude it from going any further. Clearly, the defense has been even worse than I anticipated.


At 2:12 PM, Nuggets 1 said...

NUGGETS 1:

What I did was not my ideal system, but it was a nice quick and easy summary, and I proved my basic point that no matter how you jigger the numbers, Melo comes out equal to or ahead of Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, LeBron James, Steve Nash, and so forth. But if you took a poll asking who is the best player among these and similar players, Melo would probably finish last or very close to last.

The simple system I presented was modified linear weights, because it uses the vastly superior per 48 minutes stats, instead of the per game stats. Using the per minute stats is the biggest improvement one can make from the most basic per game stats and, as I alluded to, I could get fancy and start using situational variables and regressions and that kind of stuff, and Melo would fall a few notches, but he would still be no lower than 15th, which would qualify him to be an elite player in my book, especially considering his age.

Then I went on to begin to explain why this is so.

Marcus Camby was already on the Nuggets the year before Melo arrived, when they were 17-65. He was an offensively challenged center who had just 7.6 points a game. Today he is even better defensively then he was that year, and is now one of the very best defenders in the League, but he is driving Nuggets fans up the wall with his foolish jump shooting. Although he is a half way decent 11.1 ppg, his shooting percentage is a mere .473, whereas Erick Dampier is at .654, Yao Ming is at .515 with 25 ppg, and Andrew Bynum is at .553. Summary: Camby has largely been a lone wolf (a defensive star on a bad team ) at least from the 17-65 2002-2003 season right on up to the present, but he has never been a major offensive contributor.

True, Camby played 29 games in 2002-2003. But Nene was on board in 2002-2003 and was then and remains today better offensively than Camby. He played 80 games in 2002-2003, and had 10.5 ppg on .519 shooting.

In fact, the 2002-2003 pre Melo Nuggets were so bad, that they did not have ANY players averaging more than 18.4 ppg (Juwan Howard}. And they had only 2 players shooting better than .450: Nene and Ryan Brown. Melo coming on board this wretched team was like a man in the desert dying of thirst reaching an oasis. The Nuggets needed every point they could get just to fill the stands, so Melo was given the green light to produce every score he reasonably could, so he did. The rest, as they say, is history...

"Coming off a wretched 17-65 season the only place for the Nuggets to go was up, one player who was key to their success was Rookie Carmello Anthony who showed veteran poise right away as the Nuggets got off to a solid start posting a 10-6 record through November which included a win over the Cleveland Cavaliers as Anthony battled fellow super rookie LeBron James. The Nuggets continued to play well in December as they surpassed their previous season's win total and found themselves in the thick of the playoff picture. The Nuggets would continue to be in the playoff race all season despite posting losing records in February and March as Anthony hit the rookie wall. However by finishing the season with 5 wins in their last 7 games the Nuggets were able to grab the lost playoff spot in the West with a 43-39 record. Despite 21 points and 6 rebounds per game Carmello Anthony would finish second to LeBron James in Rookie of the Year voting. However Anthony got the Nuggets into the postseason, where they faced the Minnesota Timberwolves. Despite strong games from Carmello the Nuggets dropped the first 2 games on the road. Hosting their first playoff game in 9 years the Nuggets bounced back to win Game 3 101-86. With a chance to even the series in Game 4.the Nuggets had a potential game tying by Voshon Lenard miss at the buzzer in a heartbreaking 84-82 loss, as they went on to fall to the Wolves in 5 games."

[From: http://www.sportsecyclopedia.com/nba/denver/nuggets.html]

Voshon Lenard's accuracy was a poor .422 that year, and he is typical of the poor shooting Nuggets who have come and gone over the past decade.

Andre Miller arrived that year, along with Melo, and he averaged 14.8 ppg on .457 shooting, whereas Melo averaged 21 ppg on .426 shooting. But Melo made 69/214 3-pointers in this, his rookie year, whereas Miller has always been a non-factor from beyond the arc, and he made only 12/65 that year. So if you want to give Miller some of the credit, fine. But clearly, Melo deserves a large amount of credit for the turnaround, as a rookie no less, and the turnaround was as huge as it gets in the modern NBA: from wretched to kind of good.

Is Melo taking more time than LeBron did to solidify his status as an elite player? Yes, obviously, but just because everyone wants instant superstars just like they want an instant meal from the microwave, it doesn't mean that every player destined to be a major star is going to be an instant superstar. I think it's smart for someone to take some time to build up performance, rather than try to achieve everything in 3 years. Everyone knows that a basketball career is supposed to last at least a 10 years, a dozen years in Melo's case.

The Bulls were 27-55 the year before Michael Jordan arrived, and were 38-46 the year he arrived, so he did NOT instantly lead his team to the promised land. The next season was the 30-52 season, where Jordan played just 18 games. During the next season, the 1986-87 season, Jordan played 82 games, had 37.2 ppg, but failed to get his team a winning record, as the Bulls finished 40-42 and were bounced in the first round of the the playoffs. That year Jordan was much more of a ball hog than Melo will ever be. So in three seasons, Jordan failed to raise up his teammates and get them far into the playoffs, despite being an elite player, or was it that Jordan was not an elite player at that time, because he was too young?

Meanwhile, Melo has made his wretched team a winner in all of his first three years. For every instant Melo has played for the Nuggets, unlike with Jordan on the Bulls, his team has been at least a slightly above average team, his team has been playoff bound, and his team has been destined to finish with more wins than losses, despite having many of the worst shooting starters in the Conference. It is actually amazing that the Nuggets have done as well as they have in the regular season during the last 3 seasons prior to this one.

In Jordan's 4th year, the Bull's player acquisitions worked alot better than the moves the Denver front office has made. (But I agree with the Iverson trade, just so everyone knows; the problem is that it is not enough.) The Bulls picked up Olden Polynice and Horace Grant in the draft, and they picked up Scottie Pippen, and we all know how that Pippen-Jordan combination was going to work out. They also had, in Jordan's 4th year, a far better coach than the Nuggets have now: they had Doug Collins, versus George Karl for the Nuggets, whose rotations and communications skills are so bad these days that many more fans in Denver are calling for Karl to be fired than are calling for Melo to change anything at his end.

So in 1987-88, Jordan's 4th year, the Bulls finished 50-32 and went on to reach the semifinals. The next two years after that, they reached the finals, and then they won the Championship 3 straight years in the early 90's, and three more straight times in the mid to late 90's. But it was not until Jordan's 4th year, the 1987-1988 season, with the assistance of a great draft and the acquisition of Scottie Pippen, that the Bulls became a winner.

Similarly, the Nuggets can not make the next step until they have a non-injured, typical build, scoring, defensively skilled PF or C, preferably both. And they need a G-F who can hit 3's and play defense. It is that simple; neither Melo, Michael Jordan, nor anyone else can "lead his team by example" and win a Championship without truly skilled and great teammates. This idea that the most great players can take any team they are on and lead them to the promised land is nothing more than an urban legend.

I think you misunderstood the Denver not being a basketball town point. The point was not whether the fans are juiced about Melo, but whether the view of fans around the country is affected by what city a player plays in, and it clearly is. You yourself earlier in this discussion claimed that Boozer and Gasol were rated too high. But their actual production on the court qualifies them for the rankings you saw.

Well, guess which cities they play in? Salt Lake City, Utah, and Memphis Tennessee. Neither of these two cities have ever won a Championship, with the Jazz being just fodder for the Bulls juggernaut when they reached the finals with Malone and Stockton. Memphis is generally last in attendance, and although Utah has decent attendance, everyone knows that, with only one team in the four major sports Leagues (football, baseball, hockey, and basketball), Salt Lake City can not be considered a major sports town. Both Memphis and Salt Lake City are among the very smallest markets in the League. Although Denver is a bigger market than Memphis or Salt Lake City, it is still tiny compared with Miami, Dallas, Phoenix, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, and so forth.

It is obvious that players who play for huge markets are going to be more popular than players who play in much smaller markets, so fewer will consider players such as Gasol, Boozer, and Melo to be elite players than will consider Wade, Bryant, and Nowitzki to be elite. Even after he won it all, there are still mumblings about how Duncan is not a true superstar, which is not surprising since he plays in small market San Antonio.

LeBron James grew up in Akron, Ohio, which is a notoriously middle class oriented city, with no extremely low income ghetto area like you have in Brooklyn and in Baltimore, where Melo grew up. I will say that many NBA players grew up in neighborhoods better but not overwhelmingly better than Melo's extremely low income and extremely high crime neighborhood. But just to throw out a few examples, Nowitzki is German, Ming is Chinese, and Shaquille O'Neal grew up partly in Germany, because his stepfather was in the army there.

The main thing to keep in mind on this subject is that there are bad neighborhoods and then there are neighborhoods so bad that no one wants to think about them, and even the police are afraid of them. And the part of Baltimore that Melo grew up in is such an unspeakable neighborhood: it has one of the very highest murder, assault, and robbery rates in the world. There is no area that bad in most cities. including Philadelphia, Dallas, and Houston, although there are neighborhoods that bad to be found in Detroit, South Central Los Angeles and in the Liberty City area of Miami. Melo's neighborhood was one of those where gunfire could be heard many nights.

Melo's video appearance was nothing more than a complete misunderstanding. The punch and run was a brilliant compromise between not doing anything at all to stand up for the dangerous New York City mugging of one of his best friends, and the only Nugget who can shoot 3's: J.R. Smith, and staying in the fight for more, which would have gotten him suspended for the entire season, obviously. And as for future attempted assaults on Nuggets, you can verify with David Stern that Melo understands that Stern will suspend the hell out of any Nugget who tries to defend a teammate in a future assault. Melo has assented to this in advance with Stern, upon which Stern was satisfied to the extent that he put Melo on the all-star team after numerous establishment fans such as yourself failed to vote the scoring leader onto the all-star team, for reasons some of which I have discussed. So in the future, Melo might "run away like a girl," as everyone likes to say from any assault on a teammate, in accordance with Stern's instructions. I'm still waiting to see what Kobe Bryant will do if Smush Parker is neck tackled to the hardwood and a fight erupts, or what LeBron James will do if Larry Hughes is neck takled and a fight breaks out.

Most fans are biased against most young players with respect to whether or not they are considered elite. This is very normal and happens not only in every sport, but in life in general. For example, alot of people think Barrack Obama has no business running for President, because he has not served enough years in the Senate to be fully qualified to do so. To deal with the well known bias against younger players, most sports have rookie honors such as rookie of the year, or maybe an all-rookie team.

Moreover, Melo is only 22 years old, and most folks over the age of 25 remember the silly things they did when they were young and consider anyone under the age of 25 or so to be immature and someone who could not possibly be elite in anything.

Neither you nor I nor anyone else can compare Iverson to Melo because they are at two completely different points in their career. Although the process was like pulling teeth, Melo was an all-star this year, and had one of the best games offensively of all of the West all-stars in this year's game. As the years go by, Melo will rack up many of the achievements of A.I.. If worse comes to worse, and the Denver front office can do no more to get a PF, a scoring C, and at least one solid 3-point G-F on the team, Melo might be traded in a few years. And if he is traded, the odds are he will end up in a much bigger market, such as Boston, Atlanta or Seattle, and in such a market he will have a much better chance of getting something like an MVP.

It's not just defense holding the Nuggets back. It's offense, too, and this is why they are in a complete meltdown right now. Everyone, including me, focused on Melo and Iverson when we said the Nuggets might get past the first round, but we forgot about the fact that the Nuggets have extremely bad shooters other than A.I., Melo, and J.R. Smith, the guy who was assaulted in New York City in December, and who has been more out than in with his injury, his suspension, and George Karl's poor minute allocations.

More installments are coming, to be followed by a new comment by me regarding Melo's coming of age playoff series, and how those like Mr. David Friedman now have to update their views.