callmened wrote:With Amare visiting the garden last night, it had me thinking: in their primes who was the better player? Carmelo or Amare?

Amare at his absolute peak was a top 3 player with Phoenix.

ChuckBuck wrote:Amare. Was dominant and was a Robert Horry hip check of Steve Nash away from making the NBA Finals.

Amare was Nash's sidekick. If not for Nash would we even be talking about him? Oh yeah, Amare was a great dunker. Should put him in the Hall. Speaking of the HOF, who will be a HOF? Hint...not Amare.

CrushAlot wrote:

Dagger wrote:Prime Melo is better, Amare has always been a lazy clown that never rebounded at the level he should have given his athleticism, never played a lick of defense, and never learned how to be anything other than a black hole selfish player on offense. Amare is the poster child of coasting by on athleticism without ever actually learning to play the right way.

Phenomenal

Haha, I remember it like it was yesterday. "I had a phenomenal red wine bath before learning my phenomenal post moves. And let me just say, my knees feel absolutely phenomenal"

dk7th wrote:both have been vastly overrated. thinking in terms of "better" should be substituted with "less bad."

thats fair. but for sake of discussion who had the better PEAK?

Amar'e's best season was probably his first with NY, but he couldn't even keep it going for a full season. Otherwise a lot of his greatness seemed like a side effect of Steve Nash.

At their absolute peaks if I had one game I had to win, I'd probably go with Melo. Unless peak Steve Nash was on my team, too.

VCoug wrote:Amare and it's not even that close. Just look at what he did in the playoffs from 2004 through 2010: http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/s/stoudam01.html#all_playoffs_per_game

Amar'e missed almost two full seasons in those years though. I really don't think you can separate Amar'e from Nash, either. Nash won MVP twice and is one of the top ten point guards of all time... possibly top 5.

Nash to Amar'e is like Stockton to Malone... really hard to separate the two.

Kemet wrote:Amare Amare Amare
Amare Stoudemire came straight out of High school to the NBA to win the rookie of the year, plus take Marbury, Penny n Marion to the playoffs, and winning the first 2 games of a series vs the championship Spurs .. giving Duncan all kinds of problems throughout the series.

When Melo was a rookie, Melo had a healthy Camby as C/F that gave u a double-double 2 block night, plus a young healthy center name Nene, also a leaping Birdman in the rotation those 3 big-men took care of the boards n paint. Plus Melo had a quick pass-first PG CJ Watson to pass Melo the ball to shoot shoot shoot.

well Amare started off with a cast of Marion and pre-psycho Marbury which isnt that bad at all.

both melo and stat were great from jump.

crzymdups wrote:

VCoug wrote:Amare and it's not even that close. Just look at what he did in the playoffs from 2004 through 2010: http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/s/stoudam01.html#all_playoffs_per_game

Amar'e missed almost two full seasons in those years though. I really don't think you can separate Amar'e from Nash, either. Nash won MVP twice and is one of the top ten point guards of all time... possibly top 5.

Nash to Amar'e is like Stockton to Malone... really hard to separate the two.

When Nash teamed up with Amare their first 4 years together Shawn Marion (Matrix) won the most minutes plated in the league 3 years straight with them .. Marion was the on n off court Leader of the Suns team.