KC Johnson report!

[??? ??????]

Players I'd say are better than Carmelo last year.

Lebron James, Dwight Howard, Dwyane Wade, Kobe Bryant, Chris Paul, Deron Williams, Brandon Roy, Kevin Durant, Pau Gasol, Amare Stoudemire, Kevin Martin, Tony Parker, Tim Duncan, Yao Ming, Dirk Nowitzki, Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Chris Bosh, Danny Granger.

Those are the one's I think are clearly better than Carmelo. That would put him at 20th best player at best.

I'm not all that impressed by Carmelo. He makes his money on the offensive end, but he only had a mediocre efficiency. The guy was #5 on his own team in win shares, behind Billups (who I think is also better than Melo), Birdman, JR Smith, and Nene.

 

[houheffna]

If you say so...if you just want to use one year...Salmons is a more efficient offensive player than Gordon...so what is your point. Off of one year, Rose was not quite a point less in average than Gordon in the 4th quarter, when Paxson had to beg VDN to use Rose int he 4th more often.

You can name 40, 50 players better than Carmelo if you want to. He is still a much better player than Gordon, so that makes your argument about hesitating to take Melo over Gordon seem even more outlandish. Melo over the first half of that Lakers series looked unbelievable. Got a little injured and suddenly he fell off. But for a while in the playoffs, he was looking like he was ready to step up into the top rung where the best of the best are.

Ask Denver if they would trade Granger for Melo, no. Kevin Martin over Melo? Melo outplayed Dirk in the playoffs, where he outplayed damn near everybody. Including Billups.

So you are saying with these "win shares" that Melo is the 5th best on his team? When people look at top 10 they look at who is the best leading up to the present time, not just one year. Roy is not a better player than Melo over a career, or in the playoffs, Melo averaged 27 a game and took his team to the WCF. Or was that Billups?

Simple math, Carmelo is a franchise player. Gordon....no. case closed.

 

[Fred]

AirP wrote:

Tom Waddle, NBA expert. Yes, Dribbling and shooting are 2 of the actions you can take on the court. He can also pass, which he did pretty well this year. BG isn't Anthony, true. But he's pretty good. And unless we can get Anthony or Bosh for him, get ready for a lot of sub 80 point offensive nights like we witnessed when BG was out for 10 games in 07-08.

Games like this beauty:

www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/200801300MIN.html

Or the game before it...

http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/200801290CHI.html

Or the 2 games before that:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/200801270CHI.html
http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/200801250CHI.html

So, 3 out of 4 games, we didn't even hit 80 points minus BG. True, that team didn't have Rose. But let's say we go into next year with the roster as is, - BG + 2 draft picks. Do you believe our offense will be better? How?

 

[Shakes]

I'll agree Carmelo is over-rated. He's a max money guy, if only because he puts bums on seats, but you'd need a really strong team around him to win a championship with him as your best guy. I don't know if that makes him a franchise player or not ... I'd say it's borderline. And before the "OMG you're a BG homer" comes up, I don't think you have any realistic chance at all of winning a championship with Gordon as your best player.

Carmelo and Rose as a pairing suffers from much the same issue as Gordon and Rose ... you really need a strong defender as your third perimeter player to make it work. Our problem is that most guys you can realistically get who are strong perimeter defenders aren't good offensive players ... so we're still stuck needing a scoring big.

I guess that's another point in favour of Carmelo ... there's more chance a 2010 star comes to play with him than Gordon. In total pipe-dream mode, I wonder if going along the lines of the Magic and having LeBron-Carmelo as your forwards wouldn't work too.

 

[houheffna]

Carmelo is not overrated. If you saw him in the playoffs, you wouldn't say that. If you had Carmelo with Rose, the team would be better, Carmelo does give you a player that can post up. And he has improved defensively. He is a dynamic player who is younger than Gordon, and given a good point guard and adequate at best frontcourt players, he went to the WCF. He didn't have a Bosh or Amare in Denver. So don't minimize what Carmelo can do, especially offensively. At the end of the day, you compare Carmelo to the greats in the game, you don't compare him with Gordon.

 

[Shakes]

I did see him in the playoffs: with a better supporting cast than what he'd have here, his team was outmatched against the Lakers. Which is why I said I think you'd need a very good team around him to win a championship. The Nuggets have an excellent team and yet still are probably only the 4th or 5th best team in the league.

Once again, I'd take him over Ben Gordon, I'm not arguing that.

 

[SouL EateR]

It dosent matter at this point because Simeon has not done a thing to prove that KC ever even said this. :dry: