+ Middling shooter, but has quick first step and variety of creative deliveries.

+ Has improved defensive effort but still average at best. Good rebounder.

Last season, Anthony showed up in much better shape, having shed some of the baby fat he carried in previous seasons, and for the first two months, he was an MVP candidate. However, he wore down as the season progressed, missing 16 games with injuries and seeing his free throw rate dive after the All-Star break.

That last datum requires more elaboration. On March 1, Anthony had placed among the top free throw drawers at his position, earning .462 free throw attempts per field goal attempt -- not far off the pace of other high-scoring forwards like LeBron James (.506), Kevin Durant (.504) and Dwyane Wade (.465).

From March 1 onward, his rate inexplicably fell to .304. His inside shots decreased slightly (from 35.7 percent of attempts to 32.2 percent), but there's no way such a small shift in shot selection could trigger such a huge variation in free throw rate.

Whatever the reason, we can't place him in the same orbit with the league's other elite player candidates unless he's getting at least half as many free throw attempts as field goal attempts. Otherwise, his propensity for turnovers (59th among power forwards in Pure Point Rating) and less-than-stellar defense keep him out of the discussion.

Carmelo is top 5 prolific scoring machines in the NBA. He'll relieve pressure on STAT. Also Gallo can't do it consistently and he's been in the league 3 yrs. Carmelo will do it almost single game consistently until he's put on a stretcher. He's top 3 finisher in NBA after Kobe and Wade..

If the knicks able to get a 3rd star along with Him and STAT, that knicks team would be much better than the one we currently have.

Felton to me is not a championship pg. even though it was 5 yrs ago, Billups did win finals MVP and is a big time player (clutch) Deron w or chris paul are championship bound pg.

babyKnicks wrote:Won a title for Syracuse as a freshman. Rookie of the year (or darn close, or co-rookie?)

And Felton won two state titles and an NCAA championship... so what ?

I actually think D'Antoni is the perfect coach for him. Mike will help him see how to be more efficient and to play smarter. He knows all the tricks to get a guy open and get easy shots. In the past Melo has relied too much on going ISO. He won't have to do that as much here. Talented players usually excel under Mike and I think Melo is no exception. The longer he's on the team with Mike the better he'll get at exploiting all of his talents. Mike also loves to keep the paint open for penetration and that's what Melo loves to do. We go with the spread offense so much and STAT plays the high post, so the middle is almost always wide open for a quick and explosive guy like Melo.

The big thing is going to be playing with STAT. Teams will be so conflicted trying to guard us and that will lead to a LOT of wide open man to man situations for Melo and STAT. People that don't realize how much of a difference that is over guys like Chandler and Gallo, just don't get it.