You are very off base. Examples of my sparring “Melo has always been a bad teammate” This is categorically false. His teammates have rarely...RARELY had issues with him. He’s was actually teammate of the year(lol I’ll laugh for you guys) his final year in New York “Melo sucked in OKC” Okay cool, let’s breakdown the numbers and see why “Jazz got anything they wanted vs Melo” Okay cool, DRTG says otherwise and now I’m told that stat doesn’t matter anymore. At the end of the day I’ve outline Melo’s weaknesses, the mentality he needs to have now, things he needs to do this off-season and during the season and that has all been bypassed. So regardless of what you all think I could care less.
I’ve never slandered Ariza. I’m using numbers to see why the perception doesn’t match the statistics. It’s a weird case to me because like I said I’m prettt sure Ariza was much more impactful vs GS than numbers show but dammit if the numbers do not support that claim. That is very weird to me. Don’t ask me how I became a Melo fan. Last time someone asked me a personal question it was disguised as a joke and dudes jumped in laughing at me. So I’m good. I’ll keep discussing basketball and leave personal things out of it.
Anyone who thinks Melo is WAY past his prime (like Joe Johnson) or that he won't be a MASSIVE upgrade offensively from Ariza is insane. All the team has to do is find a way to hide his defensively deficiencies. With our switch-everything D, that's not impossible. Come playoff time next year, you guys are going to be soooooooooooo glad we landed this guy.
I know and unfortunately negativity is much louder than positivity and I let that blind me. I apologize.
You can't look at players in a vacuum. Pretty much EVERYBODY would have had a similar thing to say last year about Melo vs. Andre Roberson. Sure, Roberson is a [much] better defender than Ariza at this point, but even with Ariza's horrendous shooting in the playoffs, he's still a better scorer than Roberson was/is. But ultimately we know that Roberson is probably the better player to have on a team when it comes to winning basketball, and OKC was happy to recognize that "mistake" and pursue addition by subtraction wrt Melo. In actuality, Melo was horrible in the playoffs. The question are/will be can he mentally FINALLY adjust his role, and can that improve his game along with hopefully a better system than whatever the Donovan/Westbrook combo were running offensively. And even with that, and even with potentially [much] better offense, you still have to look at both sides of the ball. Any lineup with Harden and Melo out there together, without CP3, Tucker and Capela around them, will be horrendous defensively. So is Melo coming off the bench? Does that mean he's getting PT with Eric Gordon, Gerald Green, Ryan Anderson and whomever is playing backup center. How the f is that lineup going to defend? I mean MDA is really going out on a limb here. Already DID NOT get along with Melo. Already kind of struggles with deep rotations... especially as it relates to the playoffs. He's going to have to REALLY figure this thing out and how he'll be able to maximize skill-sets. And of course, as much as anything, CP3's health will rule all (well Harden's health, but knock on wood, he's always available come playoff time). Not that any signing would change that fact though, since the Rockets have no cap room.
