In all this time I read one excellent post on Melo by Triple Threat, can't find it now but it was worthy of it's own thread. If you see it please pots here, it's the one where he lists 5 reasons why he is not happy with Melo's play. I must agree with him on all those counts but unlike him I do worry about Melo's production.

He accounts for approximately one third of our cap hold and if he continues to produce at a role player level it means one one hand we will get nothing out of him for three years and on th eother hand we won't be able to hold on to important players. If we can't resign JR or Baron next year it's already a big loss. If Melo plays at a superstar level then the rest of the roster becomes a much less worrying issue. It's ridiculous to see Melo defenders bringing up Lin etc. The xepectations are different for star players who have actually had an impact on the roster/coaching and cap room implications of a team. They absolutely need to produce ata level that justifies what the team did to get them into a position to succeed. The idea that he is playing bad offense because he s exerting enrgy on defense is beyond pathetic. You don't get this type of money to play one end of the floor. Get over it.

To add to the woes Melo shows a type of apathy or lack of interest that frustrates the heck out of people. You can't make $18.5MM a year and then play the victim.

Amare has been showing incremental progress since the all start break. I admit I was very harsh on him earlier for the exact same reason as above. Currently he is ranked 25th amongst PFs. That is not adequate performance for someone who makes $18MM. Unlike Melo, amare doesn't have the sulking/personality problems and he seems to genuinely try to play. He has showed some interest in defense as well which is a great sign but it will take a lot more over a longer period of time to convince me.

Overall I think under Woodson both are playing better D. Amare has made a good deal fo prgress, Melo I think has actually regressed a bit under him.

That brings me to the best forward on the Knicks this season - at least the data supports it. Yeah I am talking about Novak. The Melo lovers will be irate no doubt...ask me if I care
Novak has been instrumental in bringing this team back when down by double digits time after time. THIS IS WHAT STARS GET PAID TO DO. Now be honest and ask yourself. When th eteam's down 15 like in the Raptors game - who are you rooting for to bring us back? Amare? Melo? or Novak? Here is role player who is putting up numbers consistently on the offensive side, on defense he is nothing great but neither are the other two. Their defensive effciencies (points allowed per 100 possessions) are almost exactly the same. On offense there is no question who is having he most efficient scoring season. So that makes him the best forward on the team.

I must say I am still very disappointed with Melo. I was big supporter of the trade, and I still think he can do a whole heck of a lot better than this. But I will continue to call it like I see it. Right now Melo and STAT are giving about 35% of what is expected from him.

numbers are great, but this seems like a major failure to understand the basic difference in what amar'e and melo do on the floor and the responsibility they carry versus what a guy like novak or JR smith do, guys who play off the main stars or produce against the other teams' benches.

seriously, the melo hate is ridiculous at this point.

i love that amar'e gets a pass despite having a lower PER and a worse plus/minus than melo, too.

regardless, just looking at pure numbers and ignoring their context seems pretty meaningless.

to say novak is our best forward is to ignore almost everything but shooting percentage and points per shot.

as someone was posting on twitter this past week - steve francis has a higher career PER than jason kidd and isiah thomas. does john hollinger's extremely flawed rating tell you steve francis is better than isiah or kidd? two PGs who led their teams to multiple NBA finals appearances/rings? some of these new fancy stats are flawed and certainly not the end all and be all.

Melo needs to keep looking for easy scoring opportunities and tailor his game to taking only high percentage shots. If i'm Melo I focus on midrange jumpers and getting shots off picks and curls. He also seems to have abandoned up fakes and using guile to draw fouls. Gotta use your head if you can't just explode on people. He needs help getting his shots off now, cuz he's not able to elevate as he usually does. STAT had a similar problem and lately has seemed to be getting his explosion back a bit. We can't win it all without Melo playing at a higher level. This is why we brought him here!!! He's here to give us a player that can match the Lebron, Kobe, Durant and Rose's of the NBA. He's been so far below that this year that it's alarming. We can beat teams like the Pistons with a weak offense, but we're gonna need a POTENT offense to go along with our D in order to beat the Bulls or Heat!!!

Novak is a Role player and has a very narrow niche. STAT and Melo are huge parts of this teams prowess and we're struggling to get to .500 all year because of them. Melo in particular has to find a way to get his game back.

nixluva wrote:I'm still waiting for Melo to be the reason we win games. I can say that about a few Knicks players but when I think about Melo he's either a neutral presence or a net negative presence for this team. He really needs to get his act in gear. I don't wanna hear about injuries when the guys is logging starter minutes and playing in the All Star game. IMO he's had some kind of mental block and he may have come into the year in a less than elite level of fitness. Both STAT and Melo seem to have suffered this issue due in part to the off season injuries they had to deal with. Still Melo needs to make adjustments based on that lack of ability to overwhelm opponents. Melo was playing a lot of pick up games so IMO he's got less of an excuse to be out of ELITE LEVEL SHAPE than STAT who wasn't really able to go hard until very late in the summer.

Melo needs to keep looking for easy scoring opportunities and tailor his game to taking only high percentage shots. If i'm Melo I focus on midrange jumpers and getting shots off picks and curls. He also seems to have abandoned up fakes and using guile to draw fouls. Gotta use your head if you can't just explode on people. He needs help getting his shots off now, cuz he's not able to elevate as he usually does. STAT had a similar problem and lately has seemed to be getting his explosion back a bit. We can't win it all without Melo playing at a higher level. This is why we brought him here!!! He's here to give us a player that can match the Lebron, Kobe, Durant and Rose's of the NBA. He's been so far below that this year that it's alarming. We can beat teams like the Pistons with a weak offense, but we're gonna need a POTENT offense to go along with our D in order to beat the Bulls or Heat!!!

Novak is a Role player and has a very narrow niche. STAT and Melo are huge parts of this teams prowess and we're struggling to get to .500 all year because of them. Melo in particular has to find a way to get his game back.

Its clear that Melo is having an off shooting yr since he returned from his injuires. But to say he isn't the reason/or at least an intrical part in our victories is absurd. I guess defense doesn't win games anymore, huh?

He shut down Danny Granger in back-to-back games. He also did a good job on Iguadala. Speaking of Iggy and the Sixers, if you watched that game carefully , you will see that it was Melo's presence that helped us win the game down the stretch against the Sixers. Lin and Melo played pick and roll repeatedly duing the last 5 mins of the game which opened up the lane for Lin to penetrate and draw fouls because the defender was afraid to leave Melo. Despite the shooting slump, it presense opens up the game for his teammates because he must be accoutned for.

And that Novak is going above and beyond his pay grade.

17 players and 10 draft picks for Melo? Wouldn't do it the first time around and sure as heck wouldn't do it today.

MarburyAnd1Crossover wrote:At the very least the stats loweyecue cited tell us, without a doubt, that Melo is playing at nowhere near 20m$ level.

And that Novak is going above and beyond his pay grade.

Thank you for reading it the way it was supposed to be read.

loweyecue wrote:

crzymdups wrote:novak is a situational player. it is absurd to compare him to melo and amar'e who are responsible for a majority of this team's offense, whether creating their own shots or drawing attention and creating open shots for guys like... novak.

numbers are great, but this seems like a major failure to understand the basic difference in what amar'e and melo do on the floor and the responsibility they carry versus what a guy like novak or JR smith do, guys who play off the main stars or produce against the other teams' benches.

seriously, the melo hate is ridiculous at this point.

i love that amar'e gets a pass despite having a lower PER and a worse plus/minus than melo, too.

regardless, just looking at pure numbers and ignoring their context seems pretty meaningless.

to say novak is our best forward is to ignore almost everything but shooting percentage and points per shot.

as someone was posting on twitter this past week - steve francis has a higher career PER than jason kidd and isiah thomas. does john hollinger's extremely flawed rating tell you steve francis is better than isiah or kidd? two PGs who led their teams to multiple NBA finals appearances/rings? some of these new fancy stats are flawed and certainly not the end all and be all.

Calm down. Nothing here came from Hollinger's site. All numbers were from Basketball- Reference
I am not ignoring what Anare/Melo has to do neither are the Stats. Novak has been responsible for more wins this year than Amare/Melo put together. Look at why the team loses more games than it wins with Novak out of the line up - the opposite is true with Anare and Melo. I am sorry it doesn't fit your rationale but the data is the data. I didn't make it up

Novak gets PAID to be a scrub, the comparison is production against salary/expectations not one on one comparison like you are spinning it to be.

I am not hating on Melo, I am expecting him to produce according to what he gets paid. I understand you may have a problem with that but please stop making comments like " the Melo hate is ridiculous" - because it adds no value whatsoever.

If you see it please pots here, it's the one where he lists 5 reasons why he is not happy with Melo's play. I must agree with him on all those counts but unlike him I do worry about Melo's production.

He accounts for approximately one third of our cap hold and if he continues to produce at a role player level it means one one hand we will get nothing out of him for three years and on th eother hand we won't be able to hold on to important players. If we can't resign JR or Baron next year it's already a big loss. If Melo plays at a superstar level then the rest of the roster becomes a much less worrying issue. It's ridiculous to see Melo defenders bringing up Lin etc. The xepectations are different for star players who have actually had an impact on the roster/coaching and cap room implications of a team. They absolutely need to produce ata level that justifies what the team did to get them into a position to succeed. The idea that he is playing bad offense because he s exerting enrgy on defense is beyond pathetic. You don't get this type of money to play one end of the floor. Get over it.

To add to the woes Melo shows a type of apathy or lack of interest that frustrates the heck out of people. You can't make $18.5MM a year and then play the victim.

mrKnickShot wrote:Melo is definitely not earning his salary and is really shooting badly. Maybe he is injured, cocaine, roids, HIV POSITIVE, who knows. What I do like is that at the same time, he is really stepping it up on D and not letting his shooting affect his defense. That is all we can ask for.

We can all hate on him but that won't make his shots fall. All we ask for is effort and we are definitely getting effort.

And as for effort that should be a given for every pro player. It's a sad day when we hand out brownie points for a Pro Athlete giving effort!!! If he would've been doing that on both ends his entire career no one would really have anything negative to say about him. He really just now has started to give this kind of effort and it was only because he had no choice but to give his all now. No Melo has to step up bigtime or take the brunt of the media and fan scorn for not showing up when the team needs him. I can tell you that it will get real ugly for him if he doesn't start playing like he's supposed to. Especially if the team makes the playoffs and he doesn't step up and help them win.

mrKnickShot wrote:

nixluva wrote:

mrKnickShot wrote:Melo is definitely not earning his salary and is really shooting badly. Maybe he is injured, cocaine, roids, HIV POSITIVE, who knows. What I do like is that at the same time, he is really stepping it up on D and not letting his shooting affect his defense. That is all we can ask for.

We can all hate on him but that won't make his shots fall. All we ask for is effort and we are definitely getting effort.

I can't really agree with this. All we can ask for is effort? Perhaps from a bench guy or something, but not from the guy who's supposed to be our Kevin Durant!!! Melo was brought in to be our Superstar. He was brought in to give us that elite level player that can carry us for periods of time so we don't lose games like teams that don't have that kind of player. There are no rationalizations for a star player. Guys like Melo don't get that luxury.

And as for effort that should be a given for every pro player. It's a sad day when we hand out brownie points for a Pro Athlete giving effort!!! If he would've been doing that on both ends his entire career no one would really have anything negative to say about him. He really just now has started to give this kind of effort and it was only because he had no choice but to give his all now. No Melo has to step up bigtime or take the brunt of the media and fan scorn for not showing up when the team needs him. I can tell you that it will get real ugly for him if he doesn't start playing like he's supposed to. Especially if the team makes the playoffs and he doesn't step up and help them win.

Melo ain't Kevin Durant and I don't really give a damn about Melo.

We are winning now - do you give a sh1t or are you still soooo saddddddddd that this prick Melo got your boy toy run out of town? Are you gonna keep bitching in every single thread about him because you now hate him even more? Getting really old and boring.

What you should be is HAPPY that we got rid of the idiot who did not care enough about us fans and did not get his players to play defense. Woodson is such a breath of fresh air, I now replace my MDA poster with Woody's!! hahahah - I am so happy! I Love DEFENSE!!

DEFENSE!!DEFENSE!!DEFENSE!!DEFENSE!!DEFENSE!!

It's really hard for BITCHING to get good traction while we are winning

You can continue to live in this delusional state of mind where it doesn't matter what Melo does, but back here in the real world, it does matter what Melo does! No one mentioned anything about MDA, but you. Are you unable to argue a point without making idiotic and wild assumptions? I clearly stated what my point of view was and it had nothing to do with MDA or Woodson. This is about Melo and his inability to play up to his potential and place as the teams best player. Perhaps you don't think it's gonna matter should this team make the playoffs, but it will. You can't think that this team is gonna have a legit chance to advance with Melo not Playing well. The best teams eventually need their best players to rise in the playoffs.

It's great that the team is playing harder on D, but when you go up against a team that is your equal or better it's not gonna be enough to just be good on one side of the ball. Have you not been paying attention to NBA BB for all these years that this has escaped your notice? You can't really be that naive to think that all we're gonna need is to play good D and everything will just fall in place? The Bulls play great D and they didn't make the finals last year. You need to grow up and make valid arguments as opposed to your usual lame jokes.

1) Tyson Chandler -- it means we're looking for the inside high percentage shot.
2) Amare -- midrange or inside
3) Lin -- both driving inside and perimeter
4) Landry -- preferably slashing inside and not much perimeter
5) Carmelo -- if above not available.