That's dumb. You'd rather have Melo as a scorer than Larry Bird? Or how about Barkely - who never had as high a peak average and doesn't have as many career points as Melo either? Be it for a game, a year, or a 10 year period? One time Steph Curry scored 0 points in a college game. Because the other team double-teamed him the entire game whether he had the ball or not. That team lost by 30 points anyway. Does Steph's 0 points make him a bad scorer that game? If you're going to use scoring prolificness as a measure of the greatness of a scorer, surely you'd just go in order down the list right? ... of course not... For one... no. Generating points involves more than just scoring. There's the obvious - assists. There's the less obvious - hockey assists. And the less less obvious - see the Steph Curry example above. Remember that time the Rockets got blown out by like 40 points in Game 7 against Dallas? TMac and Yao put up huge numbers. Not that they weren't solid scorers anyway, but situation and strategy come into play. I'm not saying this was an active strategy by lots of coaches, but you can be absolutely certain if I was coaching against Melo, even at his peak scoring efficiency (lol), I'm not coming up with crazy strategies to get the ball out of his hands or anything. You can discount efficiency and other aspects of generating points all you want, but its part of the game. There have been VERY VERY VERY few players in NBA history that have shot at such volume with such relatively low TS% while ALSO having such high usage rate and such low assist %. Antoine Walker, Ricky Davis, Gilbert Arenas, Steve Francis, Allen Iverson... these are all guys who passed more frequently than Melo for example. Let Melo have the ball and isolate would be a pretty solid defensive scheme. You're only in trouble if he's on for a game, which statistically was less likely to happen then more, as far as efficient scoring goes. For two... AGAIN, what you are describing is a PROLIFIC scorer. The word great would reference more than one aspect of scoring. Not just how much they scored, but how efficiently and effectively and how much it impacted their teams overall and winning. Melo is prolific but did not excel in any of the other categories, basically ever. For three... total points over a career is a cool stat, but obviously durability and longevity play a big part. Give me MJ over Kareem, Malone and Kobe every day. Similarly there's lots of guys I'd go to before KG to get me points that are behind his 20th place on the all time scoring list. Not that he wasn't a very good scorer, but I wouldn't describe him as an all time great scorer befitting his 20th place on the list. A good 9 year stretch at 20 ppg+, but only twice over 23 ppg maxing out at 24.2 and never with great efficiency. This isn't about not liking a dude, its just about what's happened on the court. It is what it is.
I'll grant you that. I'm not sure why I said "generating points" when the original argument was about scoring. And I still say when the subject is scoring, the only criteria to judge someone on is points scored. Whether I'd take Bird or Barkley over Melo is beside the point, because we weren't discussing Melo's overall value as a player. In the Olympics, the greatest gold medal winner is the one who won the most gold medals. Period. Doesn't matter that some of the best athletes ever only won a single one. In the NBA, the greatest scorers are the ones who scored the most points. Period. Disclaimer: I'm not even a Melo fan. I have hopes that MDA/CP3/Harden can get more out of him than Phil Jackson and Billy Donovan/Westbrook did and that overall this is a no-brainer of a move for us, especially considering the price. But yeah, it could all go south if he's a disruption or if he's actually hitting the same wall Joe Johnson finally hit. That doesn't mean he's not one of the greatest scorers in NBA history. The top 15 Career Points Scored list has his name on it.
I'm talking about just as a scorer. There's other players I could have easily put on the list as well. Like Magic. Semantics matter in this debate. I'll take Melo as the greatest gold medal basketball winner, sure, but not the greatest basketball player to ever lace them up in the Olympics... just as an example to how words matter. No, again that's the most prolific scorers. Not greatest. You're basically saing if you were ranking the greatest scorers in NBA history you'd just use the all time points scored list?
correction. He will get passed the ball when he is open. Westbrook isnt a good pass placer and gets tunnel vision not even seeing melo open
@JayZ750, thanks for the debate, but I'm out. You're right, it comes down to semantics, and we each have different takes on what "scorer" means. We won't be convincing each other of anything. Good discussion though, 'cause neither of us resorted to name-calling.
o·ver·rate /ˌōvərˈrāt/Submit verb past tense: overrated; past participle: overrated have a higher opinion of (someone or something) than is deserved. "dismissing the work as pompous and overrated" synonyms: overestimate, overvalue, think too much of, attach too much importance to, praise too highly "I think his music is overrated" antonyms: underestimate
Same here, minimum contract. But we need his Offense though at the moment CP and JH are hurt. Other scrubs cannot even score 15 ppg consistently. Unfortunately outside of scoring and some rebounding he does not impact the game much.
