Who doesn’t love homesickness?
Carmelo Anthony’s fourth bedroom last night was arguably the most ‘Vintage Melo’ we’ve seen since entering the Portland Trail Blazers in November 2019. Although it was the record for the season, 24 points showing a victory over the Philadelphia 76ers, and Anthony’s had seven highest total points in Portland – including one in last year’s playoffs – last night’s fourth quarter offered a setback for Melo’s acquisition that New York and Denver folks he grew fond of his prime.
When you simply watched Anthony jump, the fluidity of finding the desired locations to attack opponent defenders was like watching a standard Melo highlight roll around 2012-13 during his championship season with 54 Knicks wins. But aside from the recent 1-to-8 showing five days ago, that’s what Anthony showed during his highs in an otherwise inconsistent 18th NBA season. The future 36-year-old Hall of Fame recently surpassed Oscar Robertson by 12th place on the all-time scoring list, and is after Hakeem Olajuwon for only 200 points, a number he should accumulate by April, barring any setbacks. In all probability, Anthony – who is 663 points behind Moses Malone’s ninth place, should break the top 10 if he plays a 19th season.
It’s easy to see the surface level metrics, the mid-range positives and the lack of defensive advantage and consider that the Brooklyn-born swingman has no place in this NBA – and before February 2, you could have had a compelling argument . But, especially on an exhausted list, there is still room for Anthony in this league.
Yes, he’s shooting 39 percent off the ground this season, which was 36 percent before his recent five-game stretch, and sure enough, the rebound is numerically the worst of his career per game and 36, but positive outbursts de Melo have been conducive to the success of the Blazers in recent times.
In his last five games, Anthony has scored 21, 22, 2, 23 and 24 points, in that order. Portland won four out of the previous five, and you can guess which they lost. Anthony scored 18 or more points on seven occasions this season, and Portland went 6-1 during that period, all with performances from at least 43 percent of field shots. This season, the team is 14-10, remaining above water, despite CJ McCollum’s brutal injuries, Jusuf Nurkićand Zach Collins. Last season, when Portland finished 35-39 and barely made it to the eighth classification of the Western Conference, in 18 games in which Melo – full time starter – dropped at least 20 points, the Blazers made 12-6.
The consistency of thesepunctuating the Vintage Melo departures is what you are looking for if you are a Blazers. Melo hasn’t exactly been a Kingda Ka roller coaster like Immanuel Quickley, but he had crashed almost before this month, where he is now in his best streak of five games of the season. Even with that two-point performance, he still averages 18.4 points with 47.8 percent of field shots and 54.2 percent of three during this stretch.
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The career recovery is worrying, but it is not his main agenda to be there. His offensive rating is 106, which is the bottom half of the team, but it is his best score since 2016-17, his last round with the Knicks. The defensive ranking of 115 is tied by a low career set last season, but is tied as the fifth best in this defensive gamechallenged lineup, where the worst D rankings are held by Rodney Hood, Damian Lillard, Anfernee Simons and Gary Trent Jr. The most advanced metrics are not favorable to Anthony this season, where he generally ranks in the bottom half of the team in a Most categories, such as plus-minus box, value on the replacement player, percentage of actual shot and percentage of rebound, the last of which is actually 0.1 less than Simons, a 1.8m combo guard with average of just over two boards per contest.
The main room for improvement for Anthony is the 2– filming, which is in a much better place today than it was ten days ago. In the second, Melo has a team of 39.4 percent (unless you count Keljin Blevins’ 16.7 percent, but he recorded 38 minutes throughout the season). The key for Anthony to turn that around and become a more consistent threat for the Blazers to ride along with Lillard (and eventually McCollum) offensively this season is the two of them in their usual sweet spot between 5 and 7 meters, a scowlafter a shot in the NBA today, but an Anthony has performed as well as anyone in the past 20 years.
Anthony’s two-point shot percentages are as follows: 47.1 from 3 feet in, 42.3% between 3 and 10 feet, 40% between 10 and 16 feet and only 35.1% between 16 feet and reach three points. Only last season, Melo’s percentages in those same positions were 53.0, 47.6, 41.9 and 38.0. It is essential that Melo convert his 2s, especially 3 meters away, because its usage rate of 22.6 is second only to Lillard (31.3) and McCollum (28.4), who lost 10 games and continue to count. But perhaps the most useful is the longest conversion 2s in 3s, where he has 39 percent in more than four attempts per game. Whatever it is, Anthony proved that he can still be the team’s X-Factor, they just need him to do it more consistently, which we are starting to see.