Round 6: Is Carmelo Anthony an Elite Level Player?

Back in March, as a kind of experiment to see just how juiced I could get in head to head combat with a Carmelo Anthony detractor, I was a guest critic on the blog of David Friedman, a very experienced basketball commentator whose mega blog is 20secondtimeout.blogspot.com. I bring this heated debate back to (1)Get us through the dog days of the off-season and (2)To partly make up for me being bogged down in a huge real estate project, which is keeping me away from Nuggets 1 lately.

Enjoy the fight. In round 6, I turned the competition up another notch by reproducing Mr. Friedman's views just before I went at them. You can easily compare and contrast. Here is Round 6:

At 8:13 PM, Nuggets 1 said...

NUGGETS 1:

DAVID FRIEDMAN:
"I don't agree that no matter how you juggle the statistics that Melo is equal to or ahead of Kobe, T-Mac, etc. For one thing, the NBA calculates an efficiency stat that ranks Garnett number one, Wade two, Dirk three, Kobe four, LeBron seven, Nash 11 and Melo 16. T-Mac somehow comes out at 30. I think that stat is actually pretty whack, but it juggles the numbers in a way that Kobe, LeBron and Nash are all ahead of Melo. The point is that the formula you are using obviously makes a difference--and you really have to juggle to find a way to make Melo any higher than the 15-20 range."

NUGGETS 1:
I already explained this: "As I said, no matter how you jigger the statistics (no matter what weights you put on the statistics, within reason) Melo is equal to or ahead of Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, LeBron James, Steve Nash, and so forth. Weightings that are biased in favor of rebounding and assists over scoring itself, and there are many of these around, will have Melo as low as the 40th most valuable player in the League, so the defensive bias can get pretty ridiculous. My simple but compelling rankings had Melo 19th if you divide points scored by 2 or 8th if you count points with no adjustment."

The NBA efficiency rating is typical of the many ratings that give more weight to rebounding, assisting, and low opponent scoring while a given player is on the court.

DAVID FRIEDMAN:
"Bush and the Republicans? What does that have to do with anything? "Elite" and "great" are overused words regarding basketball players. There are very few truly elite or great players. To me, if you are not a legit MVP candidate then you are not "elite" or "great." There are 24 All-Stars, plus injury replacements, and most of them are simply very good players. Melo is one of that group."

NUGGETS 1:
We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. You can go on with your half dozen elite players and I will go on with my 20. My basketball experience will be the richer. But I'm glad you at least think that Melo is "very good".

Definition of "elite": representing the most choice or select; best: an elite group of authors.

( From Dictionary.com )

There is not even a hint of a specific numerical dimension to the word "elite" in the definition, so I can not shoot down your use of the word and you can not shoot down mine.

DAVID FRIEDMAN:
"It would be pretty strange if LeBron, who is good friends with Melo, bashed him in the press. Likewise, why would Kobe take a shot at him? That has nothing to do with what we are talking about, which is whether or not Melo is an "elite" player. We seem to agree on his ranking (15-20 or so) but disagree on what "elite" means in this context."

NUGGETS 1:
The point stands and is straightforward: Kobe Bryant and LeBron James think Melo is an elite player. You won't find many players who restrict the use of the term elite to just 6 players or so; why would they think there are fewer elite players than there are all-stars? Players do not limit their highest praises to just the half dozen MVP candidates who are playing for the best teams.

DAVID FRIEDMAN:
"Your MJ to the Grizzlies example makes a lot of assumptions. MJ went to a bad team, took them to the first round of the playoffs several years in a row and had record setting playoff performances. When the team acquired some better personnel, he won six titles. Care to explain how an "elite" player shoots 36% from the field and averages 18 ppg in the playoffs? Don't tell me that he "lost confidence." Did MJ ever lose confidence? Great players don't "lose confidence." That is just a cop out. Admit that Melo has played horribly in the playoffs. That is a big reason that his team did poorly."

NUGGETS 1:
I was hoping I would get a better response on the M.J. on Vancouver hypothetical, and I am sorry that you brushed it off. Since I didn't get a rejoinder, I assume that point connected, that is, had Jordan played for the Grizzlies and they never won a Championship, you and a substantial number of others would never have considered him to be elite, whereas I still would have. And you know, behind most hypotheticals, there are ongoing realities. Here are other players, right in the here and now, who are elite in my view but who are probably not elite in your view, all of them playing for mediocre or bad teams and many playing for small markets or for Toronto:

Boozer
Okafor
Brand
Bosh
Gasol
O'Neill, Jermaine
Marion
McGrady
Howard, Dwight
Arenas (barely)
Kidd (barely and not for sure)
Camby (barely and not for sure)

As for Melo in the playoffs, I already conceded that he played very poorly (not horribly, though) in 2 of the 3 playoff series, and I also conceded that I don't know what the reason is and I also stated that I expect better this year, assuming the Nuggets get a playoff series to play in. I did not say that Melo lost confidence in himself. What I did say was: "Maybe he lost his confidence because he realized that, unlike with the Syracuse Orangeman, there was no way in hell the Nuggets were going to reach the final four?" What that means is that Melo, if and when he realized the Nuggets had little or no chance to defeat the opposing team, lost confidence in the situation and his shooting suffered as a result because of a drop in concentration or even effort. More specifically, he made too many forced shots with the Nuggets way behind on the scoreboard. I did not mean that Melo lost confidence in himself, though the way I phrased it allows for that alternative interpretation.

DAVID FRIEDMAN:
"You don't have to requote yourself; I read what you wrote. You called Camby "offensively challenged," yet he had the second best shooting percentage on the team--and his primary role is defense/rebounding, so what does it matter whether or not he is "offensively challenged"?"

NUGGETS 1:
As I already explained, the Nuggets were pathetic on accuracy that year, so being the second best is nothing on such a team, and Camby is a center so his accuracy, ideally, should be at or extremely close to .500 if you want to keep up with Ming, Dampier, Stoudemire, Bynum, and so forth. No team can afford any of their starting players to be offensively challenged. As for defensively challenged, you can frequetnly afford 1 starter who is, and sometimes two in unusual circumstances.

DAVID FRIEDMAN:
"Kleiza had an interesting quote at halftime of the Sac game. He mentioned that the ball is finally being passed around, giving him an opportunity to score. I wonder who that remark referred to?"

NUGGETS 1:
Yes, I wonder who that remark referred to also, most likely to no one in particular. The idea that Nuggets other than Camby, A.I., Melo, Nene, and J.R. Smith have been standing around, never getting the opportunity to shoot is ridiculous. They have been getting their opportunities. They have been afraid to shoot sometimes due to George "Scrooge" Karl, who will bench anyone after a bad shooting game. Both A.I. and Melo are reluctant to give alot of opportunities to a teammate until and unless that teammate shows that he can make his shots rather than miss most of them.

Let's see what happens with Kleiza now. He has to survive Karl's crazy minute allocations, and then he has to avoid returning to 1-6 shooting games. If he gets over those hurdles, he will get his opportunities, I can guarantee you that.

DAVID FRIEDMAN:
"You brought up MJ, not me. If you don't want to compare MJ's title years to Melo's first few years, then compare their first three seasons to each other. MJ's numbers are far better, plus he was a much better defender. We'll see if Melo can lead a team to a title, let alone six, if the team acquires better personnel. By the way, MJ never played with a former MVP/scoring champion like Iverson (I'm not counting the one year that Gervin spent with the Bulls while MJ was out with the broken foot)."

NUGGETS 1:
I never wanted to compare Jordan to Melo, but if forced to, I'll say that there is only a 1/6 chance that Melo will ever reach the historic level Jordan played at. I think you understand the rest of my points regarding the help Jordan needed to get the Championships.

DAVID FRIEDMAN:
"What do Boston, Atlanta and those other teams have to do with anything? Stick to the issue at hand. Denver's record improved for three reasons: (1) Melo's rookie performance; (2) acquisition of a quality starting point guard (Miller); (3) return to health of starting center Camby. You cannot give Melo all of the credit when Denver improved at arguably the two most important positions, pg and c."

NUGGETS 1:
You said Denver's turnaround from 17-65 to 43-39 was not amazing. So then I wanted to explore your view further, by asking you whether, if Boston, Atlanta, or Memphis win 42 or more games next year and make the playoffs, whether you think that would be amazing or not. I think it would be. As much as I like Camby, you can't say that a team that couldn't score at all before Melo was helped to a huge amount by a player who did not get anything near the points or the accuracy that all of the top centers get.

The Nuggets actually got worse defensively from the pre-Melo year to the first Melo year. They went from 8th place, 92.4 ppg to 13th place, 96.1. What that means is that the huge improvement, the turnaround in other words, was overwhelmingly centered around an improvement on the offense. As for Miller, I already said he shares a portion of the credit for the huge turnaround, but Melo gets the lion's share of the credit.

DAVID FRIEDMAN:
"You are missing the point when you lament Denver's offense. The Nuggets are one of the top offensive teams in the league. They are below .500 because their defense is horrible."

NUGGETS 1:
The Nuggets on the surface are one of the top offensive teams in the league, but as soon as you dig a little, you realize they are not truly a top offensive team. They lead the league in turnovers, and the offensive rebounding and shots on goal have become completely unreliable. The work they have to do on defense is reducing the pace of the offense a little. Most importantly, as I said, you can't have players such as Blake, Diawara, Johnson, and Kleiza (excepting the other game) commonly going 1-6 or 2-9 and be truly one of the best offensive teams in the League. They get alot of points, but they get 6 fewer points than the Suns get, and they would need some or all of those 6 ppg, given their defensive problems, if they wanted to be competitive with the West. And the offense is hopelessly imbalanced, with overreliance on the ones who can score, to the point where the opponents find it easy to defend the Nuggets. Obviously, simple double covers work wonders agsinst the Nuggets. I already agreed that the defense is poor, but I disagree that it is the only or even that it is one of the only problems for the Nuggets.

Iverson on defense makes up for his occasional lapses with his anticipation and his steals, so I do not consider him to be a defensive liablility. Melo is having games where his defense is below normal, but almost never grossly below normal, and he is also having games where his defense is perfectly average.

You could not possibly win a Championship with Najera even if he were the best defender in the League, because he simply will not score enough points. For lords sake, Ben Wallace has a higher career scoring output than Najera, 6.6 ppg versus 5.3 ppg. I repeat, how does it even matter how good Najera is on defense if he scores almost nothing?

The Nuggets have only one for sure elite player, Carmelo Anthony. Camby is on the cusp, and Iverson is in the vicinity and is outstanding and I love his play and all that, but he is not quite in my top 5% anymore. Time has started to take it's toll on that historic player.

The point about the Wolves was a broad one. What I was saying is that if you go back 4 years or so, to the time the Nuggets were wretched, which is also the time just after Malone and Stockton retired, the Wolves were supposed to be the team that ruled the newly formed Northwest Division. Since then, the Wolves have done worse than most folks thought, whereas the Jazz and the Nuggets have done much better than most folks thought would be the case.

Memphis was asking for several young role players with potential, and Chi-town wisely decided they should not pay the price. Although the Grizzlies are and have always been desperate, the high price they were asking for Gasol was not wildly out of line, and the Bulls gave serious consideration to the negotiations.

There were numerous newspaper articles and television sportscaster references to Duncan missing alot of free throws and supposedly easy layups in high pressure situations in games in the first half of his 9 years with the Spurs. I don't know any of the names, but Bill Walton was probably one of them.

The poverty percentages were by zip code in Melo's case and for the city of Akron in LeBron's case. The zip codes in central and Northeastern Akron all had lower poverty numbers than the city as a whole, so I used the city poverty numbers to make absolutely sure I am not making a mistake. All of the zip codes in Akron have roughly similar poverty numbers, and that is precisely my point: Akron does not have any extremely poor and extremely violent neighborhoods the way Baltimore does. I have seen with my own eyes the rowhouse, packed in, no jobs available except for drug dealing neighborhood that Melo lived in.

The crime rates were city-wide, because you can't get crime rates by neighborhood unless the police department posts them on the internet. A quick check of the Baltimore police department's site reveals neighborhood data going back only two weeks, which is a sign in itself of how much crime there is in Baltimore. The Akron police department has a chart showing crime by district, and there are no districts showing a large amount of crime over and above the district average. If someone lived in the worst neighborhood in Akron, his crime rate would be somewhat but not hugely higher than the city rate.

On the other hand, we know Melo lived in one the worst neighborhoods in Baltimore, and Baltimore is literally one of the very highest crime cities in the country, so his neighborhood must have a substantially higher crime rate than the city as a whole, because there are some middle income neighborhoods in Baltimore that have much less crime and violence. The Melo to LeBron neighborhood crime rate ratio must be at least 3 to 1. I don't know what LeBron's address was like I do Melo's, but since I checked poverty and now crime data for all of the worst neighborhoods in Akron, I have proved my point.

LeBron's neighborhood was nothing to write home about, but it wasn't the gunfire in the night and drugs for sale on every corner that Melo's neighborhood was.

Again, the larger point is that there are many basketball analysts who assume Melo can not be elite because his judgment and his morals are questionable. And his judgment and morals are questionable because he grew up where a large percentage of people end up in jail after committing various crimes. The punch incident fed right into the fantasies of such analysts. They said: "Ha ha, it's true, he has no judgment, so we are correct in assuming his upbringing makes him defective". All this from one incident that even David Stern came to completely understand, whereupon he totally forgave Melo and put him on the all-star team over the objections of the hardcore Melo haters.

Again, it is more difficult to become a pro basketball player at all if you grow up in a neighborhood like Melo's, compared to a less extreme location. More to the point of this discusssion, it is much more difficult to get recognized as an elite player if you grow up in such a neighborhood.

When did I place China in Europe? The point was that Melo's neighborhood was so bad, that the vast majority of neighborhoods in the developed world would give someone a better upbringing and less bias against being considered elite than Melo had. As for China, it all depends on where in China Ming lived. If he lived in a big city that has been economically transformed in the last 40 years and was prosperous and growing rapidly when Ming was there, such as Shanghai, Beijing, and so forth, then his upbringing was much better than Melo's. If he grew up in a poor peasant town in the middle of nowhere, then I guess he would have been worse off then Melo, since there would have been almost nowhere and almost no one to play basketball with.

I expressly did not assume you buy into the upbringing argument. I said that some who do not consider Melo to be elite do NOT use his upbringing, even unconsiously, as a rationale. If that group includes you, then more power to you.

Collins was being touched on the shoulders by the guy standing behind him, not restrained. Collins was taunting Melo and the Nuggets at the time Melo decided to belt him.

I still want to know more about the Rasheed Wallace / Ilgauskas incident. Was it an accident or not? Was there an aggravated flagrant foul called or not? You have to have an intentional, aggravated flagrant foul to come close to the incident during which Melo punched Collins, and you would need either an injury or risk of a serious injury as well. But if the Wallace thing was mostly an accident, then it does not compare and I will still be waiting for real comparative incidents. I'll probably be waiting a very long time too, which underscores how reckless the neck tackle flagrant foul Collins put on J.R. really was.

DAVID FRIEDMAN:
"You list Denver's roster as if these names prove that the team is bad on offense. Denver is fourth in scoring and fourth worst in points allowed. Do the math."

NUGGETS 1:
To repeat, A.I., Melo, Nene, and J.R. Smith are fantastic on offense, Camby is marginal at best, and Najera, Evans, Diawara, Johnson, Kleiza, and Blake are below or grossly below the average offensive output for their on court positions and their depth chart positions. So I have indeed already done the math, and I, therefore, have not been mystified that the Nuggets have been losing almost all of their games against winning teams, even though their defense is gradually improving, and is now sometimes poor rather than always very poor.

I just finished this at Nuggets tipoff time, good timing if I do say so myself. For now, peace.

More installments are coming, to be followed by a new comment by me regarding Melo's coming of age playoff series, and how those like Mr. David Friedman now have to update their views.