Owen:
Ruruland – Here is the bet. The season ends April 26th. If Melo posts a ts% above 59.8% (harden last year) from now until the end of the season I will not post on Knickerblogger between the end of the season and June 1. If he comes in under you don’t post.

Do we have a bet?

“That it was pretty much common knowledge he wasn’t anywhere near as effective even with ridiculous talent in Dallas.”

You realize that Steve Nash was the point guard for the best offense in the NBA for 9 consecutive seasons? And he was the point guard of the best offense ever?

Frank – Carmelo is ridiculously good post up defender based off 15 post ups this year? That seems a little, ahh, I don’t know, disingenuous. You tell me. How do the numbers you posted compare to previous years? What kind of overall rating for his defense can you extract from the Synergy data?

Re Ibaka, Melo and team construction – I don’t think I am simplifying the game too much by saying that a low usage .150 at 2 million from Ibaka is better than a high usage .150 from Melo at 20 million. High school math I know….

“Ok, trust me, I will be bringing this up quite a bit the next 2+ months I hope you’re big enough to stick around.”

I am big enough to stick around. Unless Melo crosses that 60% threshhold….

thank you for bringing some sanity to this board, Owen, but there’s no point in trying to discuss with someone who can only think in highly hypothetical conjectures.

if EVERYTHING goes right yeah, then Melo will have a .600 TS%, Amare will go back to his .200 WS/48 form and we’ll contend for a title.

unfortunately I don’t think that’s happening, and we’re lucky we found Lin out of nowhere to salvage this season.

but out with the pessimism, at least we won pretty nicely today, even if it was against a bad team without arguably their best player.

How about we just bet and admit we were wrong when the season is over?”

I think it’s a good stake but if you don’t want to risk a month off from Kblogger on Melo’s scoring prowess I understand.

Frank – You can compare low usage and high usage. I think the entire enterprise of being an NBA gm is figuring out how to mix and match different types of player. And that requires valuing them. But we got a game going on, so will leave it there….

Owen:

Frank – Carmelo is ridiculously good post up defender based off 15 post ups this year? That seems a little, ahh, I don’t know, disingenuous. You tell me. How do the numbers you posted compare to previous years? What kind of overall rating for his defense can you extract from the Synergy data?
Re Ibaka, Melo and team construction – I don’t think I am simplifying the game too much by saying that a low usage .150 at 2 million from Ibaka is better than a high usage .150 from Melo at 20 million. High school math I know….

OK- first of all I WAS talking about Melo this year (and not previous years) and I did say that the post-up thing was a small sample. So if you are done already repeating the obvious we can move on. Geez, it’s like talking to Karl Rove and his straw men.

And since you were talking about Ibaka in the context of Presti offering an extension- if you think Ibaka is going to resign for $2M then you have a misguided notion of how smart the league has become. If you’re talking about Ibaka on a rookie deal, then sure – i’d love to sign all players to a rookie contract. We could make a big 12 rather than just go for a big 3.

I’m not even arguing that Melo isn’t overpaid – he is. And so is Amare, especially considering the CBA. I’m just arguing that distilling Tyson Chandler down to his ORtg of 130 or whatever is just not that useful in the context of comparing him to Michael Jordan. Is Chandler better than Michael Jordan offensively? of course not. But you should know that Jordan NEVER had a ORtg or DRtg as good as TC has this year. Was he a better defender than Chandler? I don’t know, maybe, but they DO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS. It’s like comparing doctors and lawyers based on their billing – apples and oranges.

Owen:
Ruruland – Do we have a bet?

How about we just bet and admit we were wrong when the season is over?

ruruland:

That’s it? Christ, get Bill Walker back in the lineup ASAP.

Yikes even I’m not THAT extreme of a Melo-skeptic.

thenamestsam: I disagree strongly that this was the best possible scenario. It was only the best possible scenario because noone in management was willing to show some patience and wait another year. The smart thing to do when we missed out on the very top guys in Lebron and Wade was just to keep building assets until similar guys became available again. Since we made the trade Deron, Paul and Tyson Chandler have all switched teams, and Gasol and Howard both seem available. It’s not like the Knicks needed to make a move right away to get a top-10 caliber guy, there were plenty of other options potentially available if we’d held onto our cards instead of feeling like we had to play them all asap.

wait, Tyson Chandler switched teams? how come we weren’t in on that? :)

outoftowner:
Juany8, I don’t think the “advanced” in advanced statistics means that its based on complicated math, just that these are stats that aren’t part of the traditional box score.I agree the publicly available advanced statistics are rudimentary and miss a lot of what’s going on.You’ve listed some excellent criticisms, and there are others I’ve seen. But they are way better than points per game, which is the only real objective metric by which Melo is a star player.

There are 4 levels of basketball statistics:

1. box score stats
2. “advanced” stats that are derivatives of box score stats (TS% etc.)
3. on court / off court measurements
4. stats that measure things not captured in box scores (Synergy, hoopdata, whatever theoretical physics Daryl Morey is working on)

I’d argue it would be hard to make a case for Melo based on any level of those stats.

Failing that, there’s the eye test, which shows a player who shoots a lot, misses most of the time, and is out of position a lot on defense.

“which shows a player who shoots a lot, misses most of the time, and is out of position a lot on defense.”

That’s it? Christ, get Bill Walker back in the lineup ASAP.