Thus far, Carmelo Anthony hasn’t been able to be the Carmelo Anthony of old during his first year with the Houston Rockets. This would be a bit of a surprise if not for the fact that this is the second year in a row in which this is the case.
All of this is, for lack of a better word, extremely bad.
After spending six and a half years with the New York Knicks, Anthony was traded to the Oklahoma City Thunder last season. Try as everyone might, it didn’t work. Which is ok! Sometimes, players aren’t fits in places, which is not a referendum on their ability to play basketball or anything. It’s something that just happens sometimes, and in Oklahoma City, the hope that Anthony would turn into the revered “Olympic Melo,” a hyper-efficient scorer who thrived being the third banana and getting open shots on a team where defenses had to focus on two other guys, didn’t happen.
This wasn’t a bad thing, it just made it so the Thunder couldn’t win a championship (or, uh, advance out of the first round of the postseason) last year. A mutual breakup made all the sense in the world, and by the time that happened and Anthony’s Atlanta Hawks “tenure” came to an end, the runway was cleared for him to try to recapture his Olympic Melo form in Houston.
Were there warning signs this might not work? Sure! Anthony has never been much of a 3-and-D wing, which is the role he kind of needed to fill in Houston following the losses of guys like Trevor Ariza and Luc Mbah a Moute. His history with the concept of coming off the bench is not especially encouraging. The last time he was coached by Mike D’Antoni, they went together like oil and water.
But above all else, the biggest warning sign that there could be rough times ahead was his tenure with the Thunder. There were plenty who chalked Anthony’s struggles in Oklahoma City up as an aberration, one that existed because of an awkward fit alongside Russell Westbrook and Paul George. It made sense — Anthony never looked especially comfortable in a new role and his numbers were a reflection of this.
The Rockets, meanwhile, represented a fresh start in a place where he could camp out behind the three-point line and, theoretically, feast thanks to Chris Paul and James Harden’s ability to get into the lane, draw defenders, and find players on the perimeter for open shots.
Instead, the efficiency numbers Anthony has put up so far aren’t too far off from what we saw in Oklahoma City. Behold (stats in italics represent a career-worst):
A quick note on the three-point numbers: Between how the NBA operated and his ability to hit from downtown, Anthony wasn’t much of a shooter when he came into the league. As a reflection of this, his three-point field goal percentage this year is the worst of his career outside of Denver. In fairness, he had two years (2007-08 and 2008-09) where he was a passable shooter from deep in a Nuggets uniform, although his 35.4 percent clip in 2007-08 came on 2.1 attempts per game and his 37.1 percent mark a year later was on 2.6 attempts a night.
Here are some stats that nearly forced my jaw to hit the floor when I saw them:
Through 10 games, Carmelo Anthony has more missed shots (72) than field goals, assists, steals, and blocks combined (65).
Rockets are 15.4 points per 100 possessions better with him off the court.
— Justin Phan (@jphanned) November 9, 2018
The Rockets now have a net rating of -9.0 with Melo on the court and +1.8 with him on the bench.
Their defensive rating is 11 points worse per 100 possessions with him on the floor, worst of any player to play over 100 minutes this season.
— Hardwood Paroxysm (@HPbasketball) November 9, 2018
Further, Anthony’s playing a career-low 29.4 minutes per game and his 16.4 points per 36 minutes also double as a career-low. These marks are below the career-lows he established in both (32.1 minutes per game, 18.2 points per 36 minutes) in Oklahoma City. Maybe, just maybe, these aren’t indications of a poor fit in either location. Instead, they might tell another story: Maybe Anthony is just a 34-year-old professional athlete who is in the top-50 of career minutes played, and now, he’s just getting older and his ability to contribute to basketball games positively on a nightly basis is waning.
None of this is to say that Anthony isn’t one of the best scorers ever, or that he won’t end up in the Hall of Fame some day, or that there aren’t nights where he is capable of having big games — against Brooklyn last week, he put up 28 points on 9-for-12 shooting and a 6-for-9 mark from deep. At his best, this is what he can provide the Rockets, the issue is that his best isn’t something he’s capable of on a nightly basis.
The old saying is that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. For two years in a row, this has applied to Anthony. He’s been a grizzled NBA veteran who has been a star for his entire career, only deferring for a few weeks every four years to guys like LeBron James and Kobe Bryant. In Oklahoma City and Houston, he’s been asked to do this as standard operating procedure, and in retrospect, it’s not a surprise this would present some challenges.
It’s totally possible that Anthony settles into this role and becomes the devastating third banana that the Rockets want, because he’s as good of a bucket getter as the league has seen. Instead, it’s more likely that his Thunder tenure was a reminder that Father Time is undefeated, something that is getting reinforced in Houston.
