The Most Overrated NBA Player of This Decade: Carmelo Anthony
Carmelo Anthony has been the most overrated basketball player this past decade. When I look at Anthony’s career, I see a player who accomplished everything besides winning. Carmelo made the all-decade second team last year which indicates he was a top ten player, however, I don’t believe it. Carmelo Anthony has not been a top-ten basketball player for the past decade simply due to his horrible playoff record. Carmelo Anthony has a disgusting 35% win record in the playoffs. How can a person with this type of record be a top ten player of this decade?
People always cite how Melo’s teams have not been that good and that he has been surrounded with bad teammates. However, Melo has had many opportunities to either leave the Knicks or to make them better but he has consistently passed on the opportunities. Firstly, in 2014, Melo had the chance to leave the Knicks, who were not that great, to sign with the Bulls who were up and coming with Derrick Rose. There were also other better teams in which he could of the sign with but he chose the Knicks. A few years earlier, when Linsanity began, Melo became jealous of Jeremy Lin’s success. Lin who had broken out of nowhere led the Knicks on a huge win streak, but Melo apparently told Knicks’ management that he didn’t like Jeremy Lin’s success. As a result, Lin left the Knicks in free agency. This was so selfish from Melo and really hurt chances for the Knicks on winning. However, Lin, got the last laugh as he has a championship ring while Melo doesn’t.
While Melo pretty much did make the all-star team throughout his tenure as a New York Knick it was largely due to the huge market which he played in. If he played for some smaller cities such as Charlotte or some teams in the west, he may not have made as many all-star games as he did in New York. Also, in this past decade, he has only made the all-NBA team three times and only six times in his whole career but never the first team. Showing how experts never believed Anthony was a top-five basketball at any point in his career.
Now don’t even get me started on his playmaking. Carmelo Anthony’s career-high in assists has been 3.8, showing how he cannot make players around him better. Also, even in terms of his “biggest skill”, scoring, Melo has only shot above 50% for a season a grand total of three times! To add on, Melo is ranked in 9th in terms of usage rate, which just shows how inefficient of a scorer he has been. His constant isolation offense and lack of getting teammates involved in it have led to these horrible numbers. Seriously, if Melo is considered a great scorer why does he only have one scoring title.
Now let’s take a look at some of Melo’s advanced stats. Advanced stats give an accurate representation of how much a player’s production has contributed to their team's success. One such stat is a player’s win shares. A win share percentage is very complicated to calculate but just know it factors in a player’s numbers along with their team’s wins to produce a number to show just how much winning basketball they are contributing too. Here is a link to show you how they are calculated. Anyways, Carmelo Anthony’s career win share is .1232. That is a terrible number especially considering who Melo is behind. For reference, this number is behind players like Ersan Ilyasova and Taj Gibson! To many, this comparison would be straight up disrespectful for Melo but unfortunately, it is true. How can a top-ten player of the 2010s have such God-awful numbers?!
At the end of the day, my point is to say is that we should not feel bad about Carmelo Anthony not having a championship. Throughout his whole prime he has had many opportunities to win which he simply did not take advantage of. Though he is many people’s favorite player of all time, it is very hard to rank him as one of the greatest to ever play due to his lack of team success.
