I don’t know if I heard someone say this today or if I said it to myself based on what someone else said, but here it is:
Carmelo Anthony will never win an NBA title on a team on which he is the best player.
I would be willing to bet my house on this statement. There are a two factors working against Melo which make my house safe in this wager. One of these factors is his fault, the other is not. I have always been one to place Anthony high on the list of Players Who Are Nowhere Near As Good As Their Numbers Say. I think he is overrated and I was never sold on the Knicks this year. Feel free to agree or disagree with any of the points below. And if you are willing to place your house against mine I will give you mine when he wins, and you give me yours when he retires ringless.
1. Lebron James - It is looking like this could be one of those runs in NBA history where a lot of good players never win rings because they do not have Lebron on their team. Durant’s chances just got set back 4 years with the Harden trade. Howard may have missed his best chance when Orlando made it to the finals, and I don’t see his window opening anytime soon in LA. Rose missed his best chance last year when he went down early in the playoffs. Kyrie’s only chance is Lebron returning to Cleveland. Steph Curry could be the new D’Antoni Suns - the guy we all love to watch but know probably won’t win it all. Forget D-Wade’s knee. If he doesn’t play another game this post-season I still put my money on the Heat. It seems like the entire Western Conference would have to conspire to assemble a team to beat the Heat (which just may happen if Howard goes to Houston and a couple other guys who see their chances of winning a ring not on Lebrun’s team lie only in conspiracy). Bill Simmons kicked around the idea of what if you switched Lebron with the best player on any of the 16 playoff teams, how many of them would you favor to win it all - he went with 9 ½.
2. Basketball is somewhat of a zero-sum game. There are a finite number of shots either team is going to have in a given game. Some coaches or system (i.e. Paul Westhead) will try to raise that number by “cheating” in other aspects of the game, but as the game stands today, the average team takes 100 shots per game. It could be an oversimplification but it usually follows that the team that wins takes good shots and tries to force the other team to take bad shots (or fewer shots due to turnovers). Carmelo Anthony voluntarily takes bad shots. And to compound this problem in his current situation (and another reason my house is safe for now) is him playing on the same team as J.R. Smith. If I were to make an all-NBA bad shots taken team it would be Anthony, Smith, Kobe, Wade, and Westbrook.
The numbers tell us what we already know about Melo. His 2013 playoff numbers are 28.8 PPG against 1.8 assists. He shot a .406 FG%, had a player efficiency rating (PER - what seems to be the favorite metric of basketball metric guys) of 20.6, and had a Usage % of 38.0 (which means he used 38% of his team’s possessions). Let’s compare those playoff numbers with the best players on the last few championship teams.
Melo 2013 - 28.8 PPG, 1.8 APG, .406 FG%, 38.0 USG%, 20.6 PER
Lebron 2012 - 30.0 PPG, 5.6 APG, .500 FG%, 33.5 USG%, 30.3 PER
Dirk 2011 - 27.7 PPG, 2.5 APG, .485 FG%, 32.0 USG%, 25.2 PER
Kobe 2010 - 29.2 PPG, 5.5 APG, .458 FG%, 33.2 USG%, 24.7 PER
Kobe 2009 - 30.2 PPG, 5.5 APG, .457 FG%, 32.9 USG%, 26.8 PER
Jordan 1993 - 35.1 PPG, 6.0 APG, .475 FG%, 38.0 USG%, 30.1 PER
Carmelo is a gunslinger, which means he will get points. The problem is efficiency. Look as the usage % for Melo these playoffs - 38%! Only one time did Jordan ever get that high, and it was in ’93. The difference between the two players in those 2 playoffs is that ONE OF THEM IS NAMED MICHAEL JORDAN! Contrast Melo with the championship Spurs teams (and even the Spurs of the last 2 years). The difference is efficiency. And in this zero-sum game, if your team gets 100 shots and my team gets 100 shots, and your team takes bad shots while my team takes good shots - I like my chances of wining. The efficiency statistics were made for Lebron. The difference between the two is that everyone on the opposing team fears Melo and puts extra defensive efforts on him - which often causes him to take bad shots, while Lebron uses the extra defensive attention on him to create better shots for his teammates. When the Heat finally get challenged this series and next (I’m betting by the Spurs), the thing that is going to put them over the top is Ray Allen. If your plan is stop Lebron and Wade then Ray Allen will be simply shooting fish in a barrel.
Let’s just leave it at this - since 1980 (I know nothing about pre-1980 basketball) no team has won an NBA championship with a gunslinger/black hole not named Jordan or Kobe. And Kobe was not the best player on his team for his first 3 rings, and had the best passing big man in the game, Pau, on his team for the final 2 (yes, I did mean to say final 2). And Michael Jordan is Michael Jordan, so that pretty much takes care of that. So the lesson learned is that if Carmelo want to win a non-olympic championship he will either have to a) be Jordan-esque, b) play for Greg Popovich, or c) join in the Western Conference conspiracy and take a 50% pay cut so he can join Chris Paul and Dwight Howard in Dallas (and then I still get to keep my house because Chris Paul would be the best player on that team).
