Offensively, Carmelo Anthony has been called one of the best scorers in the history of the league by a lot of people that know basketball. He has never had a season where he averaged less than 20 points a game and is a pretty efficient scorer. This past season for the Knicks, he averaged 22 points per game, shooting 47% on 2 point shots, 36% on 3 point shots, and 83% from the free throw line. He did all of this while averaging 6 rebounds and 3 assists per game. He only turned the ball over 2 times a game. Looking at the numbers this sounds pretty good and any team would welcome him to their lineup by looking at this. However, when you watch the Knicks play, Carmelo Anthony is a ball stopper. When the ball comes to him, it stops and you watch him jab step and pivot his way into a contested jump shot. The problem with this criticism of Melo is that he is really good at this style of offense. He is extremely efficient as a scorer and rates out that way by every advanced metric there is.
Defensively, Carmelo Anthony rates out as Good according to Synergy. He is a decent defender, but there have been questions before about his effort on that end of the floor. However, there have always been asterisks next to the defense of guys that are so important to their teams offensively. The rationale being that if Carmelo is tired from playing so hard on defense, how can you expect him to carry you offensively. He will never be a great defender, but you are also not going to find a lot of horrible clips of him not playing defense like you might for James Harden.
Looking at the numbers and the clips that I have watched, it is clear to me that Carmelo Anthony is still an elite level NBA scorer and that is the issue. There is one area of his game that we have not discussed yet and to me it is the area that stops me from mentioning Carmelo as an elite player. He is not a good teammate. Watching him through the years, he is not a guy that is willing to fit in with the strengths of his teammates. He has always played with the idea that you have to play through me and I am not going to change my game to fit what you want to do. We are going to slow down the pace and feed me the ball in isolation and that is how we are going to play. Everyone can remember Linsanity, Jeremy Lin's incredible run in New York that showed how great Mike D'Antoni's system could work. However, there were reports that Melo was upset by the whole thing. Mike D'Antoni himself said that it wouldn't have worked because Melo refused to play the style that New York would need to play. It just seemed that Melo was never willing to adapt to the style that would help him win. In the 2012-13 season, the Knicks led by Carmelo went 54-28 winning their division and making it to the 2nd round, Carmelo played small ball for them. He played the power forward position for them and they were so successful that people thought the Knicks were going to be good again. It was short lived and they have not been back to the playoffs since. Many assert that he did not like playing the four and did not want to do it anymore.
Is Carmelo Anthony a good basketball player? Yes, he is quite good. Can he play on a championship team? Yes and no. Yes, if he is willing to accept a role and play within that role. He has to be willing to let other people get more attention and more focus from the media, but if Carmelo is your number 2 or 3 player, you are in great shape. However, if Carmelo comes as he is and is not willing to change, he can destroy your team. The speculation out there is that Houston wants him. Carmelo Anthony for them is going to be a spot up guy. Harden and Paul will dominate the ball and I just don't see Carmelo thriving in that role. He would be an asset in a playoff series where the game changes, much in the way that Kevin Durant was a huge asset for the Warriors, who did not have a scorer like that before despite their regular season dominance. There was a reason the first two Cleveland-Golden State finals were close and the third was not and it was Golden State having a guy that could get buckets. Melo can be that guy in my opinion, not even close to Durant's level, but he can score. It's only a matter of if he is willing to sacrifice to get to that moment.