thenamestsam: Agreed on all fronts. I think the Melo-Kobe comparisons are an interesting study on the effect of circumstances on careers. If you dump Melo on those Lakers teams with the chance to play with Shaq early in his career, for a legendary coach with defense being preached to him every day I think it makes a huge difference for him, and I think he could have had a career very similar to Kobe. Take Kobe out of that environment and I could easily see him having had a sort of rich man’s Melo career, with a disinterest in defense and lots of gaudy scoring numbers to go with very few playoff series wins.

I agree that melo prob would have some rings if you switch his career with Kobe’s, but I don’t agree on the rest. Kobe is wired a certain way (like MJ) that melo isn’t. And I’m not saying that it’s a good thing to be wired like a sociopath, just an observation

2FOR18: It also depends on what you mean by better.Career value or at his best?
ie Eddie Murray is in the HoF, but at his best, Mattingly was better.
By any objective measure, Dirk has more value than melo, but melo still has time.At his best, I would take Bernard King over both of them, but his career value’s not even close to Dirk’s or what melo ends up as.
Kobe may be the 3rd best player on his team right now, and that’s freaking scary.

Agreed on all fronts. I think the Melo-Kobe comparisons are an interesting study on the effect of circumstances on careers. If you dump Melo on those Lakers teams with the chance to play with Shaq early in his career, for a legendary coach with defense being preached to him every day I think it makes a huge difference for him, and I think he could have had a career very similar to Kobe. Take Kobe out of that environment and I could easily see him having had a sort of rich man’s Melo career, with a disinterest in defense and lots of gaudy scoring numbers to go with very few playoff series wins.

thenamestsam: This can get very tricky because of how dramtically winning a title can alter our perceptions of how good a player is, even if they remain fundamentally the same player. Is Dirk better than Melo? Our stat heads would say definitely, but he’s clearly worse on defense and I think a year ago most NBA watchers would have been relatively split. But now that Dirk has a title in the bag everyone looks at him as better than Carmelo.

It can also be extremely hard to even say who a teams best player is since as this board proves on a day to day basis that comparing different types of players is still far from a science in the NBA. I’d say Gasol was the best player on the Lakers team that won two years ago but most people would say Kobe.There are certainly plenty of people who would disagree with the idea that Carmelo is the best player on this team.

It also depends on what you mean by better. Career value or at his best?
ie Eddie Murray is in the HoF, but at his best, Mattingly was better.
By any objective measure, Dirk has more value than melo, but melo still has time. At his best, I would take Bernard King over both of them, but his career value’s not even close to Dirk’s or what melo ends up as.
Kobe may be the 3rd best player on his team right now, and that’s freaking scary.

2FOR18: Yeah.I was just thinking if I could come up with a team that won with a best player “worse” than melo.The only team I could think of is the Billups Detroit team.So I shouldn’t have said it can’t be done, but that Det team seems like an outlier.

This can get very tricky because of how dramtically winning a title can alter our perceptions of how good a player is, even if they remain fundamentally the same player. Is Dirk better than Melo? Our stat heads would say definitely, but he’s clearly worse on defense and I think a year ago most NBA watchers would have been relatively split. But now that Dirk has a title in the bag everyone looks at him as better than Carmelo.

It can also be extremely hard to even say who a teams best player is since as this board proves on a day to day basis that comparing different types of players is still far from a science in the NBA. I’d say Gasol was the best player on the Lakers team that won two years ago but most people would say Kobe. There are certainly plenty of people who would disagree with the idea that Carmelo is the best player on this team.

2FOR18: Yeah.I was just thinking if I could come up with a team that won with a best player “worse” than melo.The only team I could think of is the Billups Detroit team.So I shouldn’t have said it can’t be done, but that Det team seems like an outlier.

johnlocke:
That’s the beauty of the game…people said the same thing about Dirk until he did it. That’s what’s funny about subjective opinions, you’re right until you’re wrong. As a fan, I have to root for him and hope he can with the right supplementary pieces…b/c we’re not getting anyone better than Melo on this team anytime in the next 5 years.

Yeah. I was just thinking if I could come up with a team that won with a best player “worse” than melo. The only team I could think of is the Billups Detroit team. So I shouldn’t have said it can’t be done, but that Det team seems like an outlier.

2FOR18: You can win a championship with melo, but not if he’s the best player on the team.

er:
Another annoying melo bash today is that he is 16-34 in playoff games…

In 03-04 lost to the #1 min timberwolves his rookie year which coincidently was kgs MVP year

Lbj no playoffs

Lost to spurs I believe next year
Lost to a better clip team next year when nene had ball cancer I believe
Then lost to the spurs again and then lakers

How many all time greats did he lose to you ask…Kobe Duncan KG etc all in their primes so I’m sorry he wasn’t playing the likes of the wizards every year (lebron)

Yes, that kind of stuff is silly.

But just to be clear, no one on here is saying melo sucks, so calling people on here melo haters or whatever is off base. Even the most anti melo guy on here will concede that he’s, at worst, one of the top 30 ball players in the world.

The beef is mainly about whether melo is worth the resouces (players, draft picks, max salary) we gave up to get him, and whether his strengths are too duplicative (?) with Amare’s strengths, thus having most of the salary cap taken up by 2 guys that both need to be primary scorers in order to maximize their worth.

My hope is that we somehow get a genius coach next year who can figure out how to make this all work, as there’s no doubt we have plenty of talent to be a contender.

johnlocke:
Agreed. Not only lazy journalism but really terrible logic. He argues that Carmelo can’t be the center piece of a championship team by comparing him with a player that has never won a championship. He sprinkles the article with easily google-able stats to provide an argument grounded in very little logic, some kind of credibility. I’m not saying that Melo is or is not capable of being the centerpiece of a championship team, but to try to prove that point by highlighting that Lebron is much better than Melo is just retarded. Every team that has won the championship in NBA history has not had Lebron on it. Come on dude!

You can win a championship with melo, but not if he’s the best player on the team.

In 03-04 lost to the #1 min timberwolves his rookie year which coincidently was kgs MVP year

Lbj no playoffs

Lost to spurs I believe next year
Lost to a better clip team next year when nene had ball cancer I believe
Then lost to the spurs again and then lakers

How many all time greats did he lose to you ask…Kobe Duncan KG etc all in their primes so I’m sorry he wasn’t playing the likes of the wizards every year (lebron)