So we played without melo but healthy eg and we still were ****. Can we all agree he is not the problem?
He's certainly not the only problem, but he is more part of the problem than the solution. As many of us feared, he simply doesn't help. His value was always as a volume scorer. In his prime, he was talented enough to be the primary option. Now that he isn't good enough to do that, he frankly isn't worth much. Literally all of his value was tied up in being a primary scorer. Now he is just a mediocre volume scorer who is deficient in basically every other facet of basketball. I'm not sure in what role he can actually help a contender.
It’s like Carmelo wants to play for a team like the rockets, he just doesn’t want to play for the rockets. Team USA isn’t the rockets. Syracuse, New York, Denver...not Houston. And we don’t need team USA Melo, hoodie whatever version those were. We need Carmelo Anthony, Houston Rocket. Sacrifice your ego for the team. The role isn’t hard. Backup 4. Stretch the floor in half court. Hit transition 3s. Give effort on defense. 4th option shot creator on the post behind cp, harden and Gordon. When you’re on you play more. When you’re off they work in green. Or Clark more. Just play Clark more.
To add to this, a guy at my church ref'd for 25 years in the NBA. His one comment when Melo was signed was that Melo was a cancer. He knew...
"Some" of our 3 point attempts aren't contested? How about 81% aren't contested? We did the same thing last year and shot 36% and had one of the most efficient offenses in league history. So why is it now bad? We are getting the same open looks. It's not like defenses are suddenly taking anything away. We are averaging 14 turnovers per game. Last year we averaged 13.8. Again I ask, "what's the difference?". Tons of open looks is not a bad thing. We are just missing shots and we are missing from everywhere. The scheme isnt making us miss open shots.
I cant blame all this on Melo. They all look terrible. This year reminds me of the year after we made the WCF last time. The energy is just not there.
Clark has an offensive rating of 91.6 he clearly isn't a better option on the offensive side of the ball. He is like the opposite of Melo. All defense no offense while Melo is all offense no defense.
Melo is not the problem. It seems that when Ariza and Moute left, they took the Rockets n**ts with them.
Completely disagree with this take. The Rockets are out there playing hard and hustling. They just can't make anything. First few games they got routed for bad defense, but since then they've got that figured out, they just can't score. Nobody can make shots. That's not effort or nuts.
So they're discussing his role going forward. I suspect if Melo wants more minutes then he is getting, they will cut him.
https://www.chron.com/sports/rocket...ghing-where-Carmelo-Anthony-fits-13381588.php Two individuals familiar with the talks said the Rockets are weighing where he fits with Eric Gordon back from his injury and rookie Gary Clark showing enough, especially defensively, to want to keep playing him. Those two factors could severely cut Anthony's playing time, as the Rockets evaluate how to deal with that. Rockets coach Mike D'Antoni referred questions about Anthony's role to general manager Daryl Morey who did not comment.
Failing Carmelo Anthony experiment is obscuring Rockets’ real problems This is not all on Carmelo Anthony. Rockets general manager Daryl Morey pursued him for years. Many fans spent the past two offseasons campaigning and begging for him. A 65-win team knew exactly – and I mean exactly – what it was signing up for when it added Melo and his 16 seasons’ worth of increasingly impractical NBA baggage. I will also point out, though, that there was a behind-closed-doors understanding when the Rockets finally landed Anthony last summer. If the experiment was not working, the organization would move on as quickly as possible during a season when the only goal that mattered was finally overcoming the Golden State Warriors and winning the franchise’s first world championship since 1995. Smart NBA people break seasons into quarters. Give it 20 games, evaluate. Play 20 more games and re-evaluate. Then the trade deadline and, maybe, the playoffs. The Rockets are 4-7 after falling 96-89 at San Antonio on Saturday night, despite the Spurs playing without Rudy Gay. Just 39 second-half points for a Mike D’Antoni team tells you, again, that these Rockets are a total mess, just like the 35 second-half points against Oklahoma City (who easily won without Russell Westbrook) did on Thursday. But you want the transparent truth? The real reason the failing Rockets can’t even wait until the season’s initial quarter mark? On the same day that Jimmy Butler – once a potential savior for these Rockets – instantly sped up Philadelphia’s process, Anthony sat out another defeat due to “illness.” Before the loss was even complete, ESPN reported that the Rockets and Anthony were privately (oops) discussing whether the fading “star” would remain with the team the rest of the season. Asked about Anthony’s future after the Rockets fell again, the 2016-17 NBA Coach of the Year – who didn’t exactly mesh with Melo inside Madison Square Garden – referred all questions to Morey. Twenty games? Yeah, right. Try 11. Funny, because that’s the same amount that Kevin McHale got just three seasons ago. The Rockets were also coming off a Western Conference finals defeat to the Warriors then. Internal and external expectations were rafters high. Morey tried to back up James Harden – then splitting with Dwight Howard – with Ty Lawson. That experiment badly failed. The Rockets became a 41-41 disaster, canning McHale and eventually placing the team in D’Antoni’s offensive-minded hands. This season’s squad faced much higher expectations. Championship, championship, championship was all that Harden said as a new season awaited. Which means that this beginning has been way more disappointing, which is why we’re already at a serious Anthony crossroads just 11 contests into an 82-game campaign. "The worst we're going to be is great," a fiery D'Antoni said in July, before 4-7 and Melo drama. Consider this: The Rockets suddenly lost defensive guru Jeff Bzdelik just before training camp, were publicly attached to endless Butler rumors just five games into the season, then lured Bzdelik out of retirement, despite the fact that he was unable to immediately rejoin the team. Don’t overreact? Give ‘em time to figure it out? My lord. The Rockets are blatantly telling you exactly what they think about all this. And just like 2015, if anyone’s panicking, it’s Houston’s NBA team. I don’t blame them this time. Anything less than the conference finals is absolutely unacceptable. Morey has been chasing the ghost of Golden State since 2014. Tilman Fertitta isn’t going to settle for anything less than the best. So, of course, they’re trying to figure all this out on the fly and still save a season that has 71 regular-season games to go. But, again, let’s dig a little deeper than just blaming Melo. The Rockets badly wanted Kevin Durant before he one-upped LeBron James and became an NBA-altering Warrior. Remember who was at the top of Morey’s dream list last summer? That’s right: The King. The Rockets haven’t been right since. While they barely received a glance from James during free agency – hello, La La Land and the Magic Johnson Lakers -- Golden State (currently 11-2, again leading the West) added DeMarcus Cousins on the cheap. The Rockets rightfully refused to overpay a declining Trevor Ariza. But they replaced his defensive intensity, nightly swagger and respected veteran presence with … what? Melo, Michael Carter-Williams and Isaiah Hartenstein? Brandon Knight (another experiment) hasn’t played a game since February 2017. James Ennis has disappointed thus far. Let’s also be real about the Rockets that really matter. Harden (7-of-27 from the floor, 1-of-13 on 3s against the Spurs) isn’t playing like the league’s reigning MVP. Chris Paul is playing like he just realized he’s 33 – the season after signing a four-year, $160 million extension. P.J. Tucker has lost his fire. Gerald Green is shooting 36.4 percent from the field and 25.9 percent on 3s, which means he shouldn’t be in an NBA rotation right now. Eric Gordon’s hitting just 33.3 percent of his shots and has seemingly been frozen by trade rumors, despite the fact that he’s been shadowed by them for almost a decade. But what about Melo, you ask? The numbers (13.4 average points, 5.4 rebounds, 40.5 percent shooting, 32.8 percent on 3s) are all right, sort of. But full-court, four-quarter buy in? Defense creating and leading to offense? On-court chemistry and truly sacrificing like the NBA’s best on a nightly basis? If you think it’s just about numbers with Anthony, then you probably explained away what was previously the worst year of his career in Oklahoma City and swore his addition would instantly take the Rockets to the next level. I figured, worst case, the Rockets would be forced to move on after 20 games. But eleven? That got McHale fired – and this one isn’t on D’Antoni. Yes, the Rockets should be better than this. Their as-is roster is also currently a mess and this team hasn’t run the court with a consistent heart since Rajon Rondo spit on them. This isn’t all Melo’s fault. But the Rockets are playing like a team that bet on the 34-year-old Anthony the summer after they lost out on James. No wonder they’re 4-7 and already trying to figure out if they want to give Melo’s jersey to someone else.
"The worst we're going to be is great." Ooooof. I forgot he said that. I knew then that had the potential to not age well.
Carmelo isn't the problem. He's unfairly being used as the scapegoat because the team looks horrible. To put in context, he came to a 65 win team with the MVP, HOF pg & top rated offense. But the MVP isn't playing like he should, the HOF pg can't make a layup & is turning the ball over, & the coach isn't making any good adjustments. Carmelo is trying to find his role on a team that's in complete chaos right now. It's not on him
