Well, that didn’t take long.
According to Marc Berman of the New York Post, some problems have already appeared with respect to Carmelo Anthony’s behavior in New York. Here is some of what Berman had to say about Melo.
Anthony’s pouty behavior in Friday night’s 99-95 loss to the Pistons, his bad oncourt body language, his failure to join a timeout huddle when not in the game has raised red flags about his readiness to handle the pressure for being a basketball star in New York.
…. Earlier this week, Anthony questioned the Knicks’ defensive schemes after the Indiana losses.
The Knicks have played 14 games with Carmelo Anthony, and the team’s record has only been 7-7. When we look at Wins Produced, though, the team appears a bit better than a 0.500 team.
Since the trade, the Knicks’ players have produced 7.5 wins, which translates into nearly 44 wins over an 82 game season. The source of these wins, though, may be surprising to those who see Melo and Amare Stoudemire as the star players on the Knicks. As the following table indicates, both Anthony and Stoudemire have been below average across the past 14 games (average WP48 – or Wins Produced per 48 minutes – is 0.100).
Although the “stars” have come up short, the guards on the team are saving the Knicks. Specifically, Landry Fields, Toney Douglas, and Chauncey Billups are producing 74% of the team’s wins since the trade.
In looking at these numbers, one wonders if this trio should be pouting. After all, if Melo and Stoudemire were as good as people believed, this team – with Fields, Douglas, and Billups producing as we have seen — could already be a title contender.
Of course, Melo and Stoudemire are not quite as productive as their reputations suggest. They are also not quite as bad as their numbers after 14 games suggest. In other words, 14 games is a very small sample; so we should expect to see more production from the Knicks’ stars. And one should quickly note….we also should expect to see less from Douglass. Last season Douglas posted a 0.083 WP48. And prior to this trade his WP48 mark was 0.085. These numbers suggest that Douglas is probably not as productive as he has appeared across the last 14 games.
Although 14 games is a small sample, we do have a larger sample from Melo’s career that allows us to conclude the following:
- Carmelo Anthony is really not as productive as his scoring and corresponding reputation suggest.
- The acquisition of Carmelo Anthony is not going to transform the Knicks into a contender.
- That means the Knicks are not going to win as often as their fans and Carmelo Anthony will like.
- But because both the fans and Melo think Anthony is a star, neither the fans nor Melo will ever blame Anthony for the failure of this team to win as often as they would like.
And that means, expect to see Melo to continue to pout, his fans to make excuses, and other people (like Coach D’Antoni?) to eventually take the blame.
– DJ
Wages of Wins Journal 
Nerd Numbers
March 20, 2011
Listening to New York on twitter lately has reminded me a lot of Denver fans a few years back. The question is will Melo + Amare be able to keep up the ruse long enough to get Chris Paul to join? If so then Melo may well be worth it.
dberri
March 20, 2011
Nerd Numbers,
But given the vast audience listening to the WoW network, how can the ruse continue for more than a year? :)
robbieomalley
March 20, 2011
Dave,
I’ll grant you that vast audience, it seems reasonable. However, you make another assumption that I question. The assumption is that the large audience you have also agrees with you. I think it would be the opposite. It seems when someone comes here and disagrees with you their stance strengthens over time. At some point the argument isn’t even about the merits of your system. It becomes something else.
dberri
March 20, 2011
Robbie,
People don’t disagree about advanced stats. Go to Winston’s forum or the APBR forum. Very little disagreement is observed. So I am not sure what you are seeing. :)
thedubfan
March 20, 2011
I have a ton of respect for WoWs…but in this instance, I’m not buying it one bit. It’s funny, Melo has been chastised for his defense all his career (only partially correctly, btw) and now that he is frustrated about defense…which is playing as a Knick…he’s a pouter. This isn;t about Melo. It’s about D’Antoni’s system…where there never has been any defense at all.
Melo is frustrated (if he really is) not because of “Melo”, but because no D’Antoni team has or ever will pay defense.
WoWs continued barrage against Melo (because the WoW team thinks he is the poster child for their point) is less reinforcing of the collective point than they really realize.
thedubfan
dan
March 20, 2011
Robbie,
I’d like to direct you to an interesting article that touches upon your astute observation entitled “How facts backfire”. The gist of it is that when people are confronted with facts that contravene their worldview, not only will they reject these facts in order to resolve the cognitive dissonance, but they will in actuality feel that their incorrect beliefs have been reinforced(!!).
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/
In other words, whenever you try to tell somebody that Carmelo is overrated, not only will they probably not believe you, they’ll in fact become further entrenched in the belief that he’s a superstar.
That said, Dr. Berry, are you really arguing Dantoni’s defensive schemes (or lack thereof) have not contributed to the problem? Just look at the Bulls since Thibodeau arrived… their defense jumped from 11th last year to 1st this year. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. If there’s one thing a coach really CAN influence, it would have to be the defense, wouldn’t it?
Robert
March 20, 2011
It is funny Dr. Berry, but I thought based on your evaluation, that the big loser of the Carmelo trade would be Dantoni. I thought Carmelo, as being improperly rated by fans and mainstream media alike, and as a result would cause unrealistic expectations. When those expectations fell, they would not cause a reevaluation of Carmelo, but others would be blamed, most likely the coach. Management, is not going to blame itself, and the saying goes, you can’t fire the players, you fire the coach. So I have the feeling Dantoni won’t survive. We’ll see.
Tony
March 20, 2011
Hmm, the Toney Douglas thing sound like a reersal of Trevor Ariza from Lakers to Houston, once Douglas didn’t have to worry as much about the offense he was probably able to focus on just helping the team and his WP went up. Ariza had to take a role he never had before as a big part of the offense and his numbers went down.
Greyberger
March 20, 2011
Just a side note to avoid any potential disagreements:
Dave _Berry_ is a pop musician popular in England in the sixties.
Dave _Barry_ is a humor columnist and author of books like the excellent “Dave Barry does Japan”.
Dave _Berri_ is a sports economist.
While we’re at it, WP stands for Wins Produced, and in most contexts WS stands for Win Shares. In Wins Produced parlance WS sometimes stands for Win Score which is not related to the other WS.
AWilliams
March 20, 2011
@dan
Very good article dan. Thanks for posting.
Mike
March 20, 2011
Common misnomer. D’antoni’s teams have regularly been average. Before anyone pipes up with that as a criticism, realise how good that is for a high pwered offense, and consider that the best defensive teams are often average on offence.
Examples form here: http://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2011.html
This year, the Knicks are 22nd in defence, and 7t in Offensive rating.
In 2008 D’Antoni’s Suns were 2nd on ORtg and 16th in DRtg.
Compare that to this year when the Celtics are 17th in ORtg and 2nd in DRtg, and the Bulls are 15th and 1st, and I think it is fair to say that D’Antoni is an offensive coach who tries to keep his D at or near the league average, and that either strategy (defense heavy average offense and offence heavy average defence) is just as likely to be effective.
F19ure
March 20, 2011
@dan
The only thing an NBA coach can impact is assessment of talent. I.e., finding the players that are best suited for each position. The backbone of your defense is enforced by your front court, naturally (guards are typically opportunistic defenders―mostly relying on long loose balls, or swiping @ outlet passes―there are some players that are very good @ recognizing these opportunities―e.g., CP3, Iguodala come to mind―in almost every game, but this not enough on the defensive scheme of things).
A coach that can’t recognize that Tyson Chandler is a better center than Eddy Curry is gonna lose a lot more games as a result. Same reason Kris Humphries was seeing fewer minutes in New Jersey competing with Favors, Lopez, and Murphy (even though he’s more productive than all three combined). And Love on the bench in favor of Al Jefferson, really. Though I will speak in favor of Jefferson and admit he is productive (and even was producing at a all-star level in 06-07 and 07-08), so it’s understandable that the Minnesota coaching staff wanted him on the floor more than Love. He was an established post player, and I guess they were hoping he’d return to form after all those injuries?
GovernorStephCurry
March 20, 2011
Dave,
While i love your crusades on the dumb basketball media and their scoring love, your metric is a joke.
Keep it to that criticism, don’t quote your stat.Thanks.
much love
bags fly free
March 20, 2011
this nba/espn shit is SO predictable, after the knicks started losing the espn blaming game has begun and guess who’s the target? d’antoni haha, and then charles barcklay chimed in, wait no one will criticize melo and amare? this is so pathetic, how can u play ball majority of ur life, make it to the nba and still not know how to play defense?
and what does ‘d’antoni does not teach defense’ mean? does that mean he tells the guys when the opposing team has the ball to simply let them score and then go on with d’anotni’s offense? “hey guys we’ll just let them score, dont play D at all, i only coach/worry about offense”, hey media, how about criticizing ur pathetic 25+ y/o ‘all stars’ who get paid whoppin max contracts, oh wait thats not politically correct or someshit
Italian Stallion
March 20, 2011
1. As Mike stated, D’Antoni’s teams have been unfairly criticized for their lack of defense because so many people are preoccupied with points “per game” instead of “defensive efficiency”. His best teams have tended to be about average based on that more important metric.
I would also add that he has some strategic elements in his system that sacrifice defense in favor of greater offense.
For example:
If you had a choice of your team giving up an average 1 point on a possession or .90 on the same possession, most would opt for .90. However, if I told you that sacrificing the extra .10 would gain you .15 on the next offensive possession, you’d be foolish not to do it. A strategy like that hurts the defensive metrics but increases the overall efficiency differential.
2. I am less sure what to think of Toney Douglas than everyone else. Douglas showed some signs latelast year of developing into a pretty good ballplayer. This year he has been struggling with an assortment of shoulder and other injuries. He probably should have been shut down for awhile, but he was kept in the rotation because the Knicks had such a thin bench and were especially weak at PG. So he played through the pain and was struggling badly at times because of it. He got plenty of rest during the all star break and seems to be much healthier now. So there is at least some chance his better play is more sustainable than would typically be the case.
3. D’Antoni is definitely going to get the blame if the team continues to disappoint. Virtually all the NY beat writers, sports radio shows, and Knicks blogs (Knickerblogger the long wise exception) was pounding the table to do the deal and thinks Melo is a superstar. There is no way any of them are going to admit they were wrong, or even worse, blame Dolan for forcing another moronic deal and potentially lose some access.
4. I have been told that privately D’Antoni was very much against the deal and wanted no part of giving up all the young pieces he felt fit perfectly into what he was trying to build long term for a player that didn’t fit with Amare or with what he was trying to do.
Philip
March 20, 2011
Mike, well said. To add, the Knicks were a much better defensive team before Melo’s arrival. It (probably) is just a small sample size at work, but maybe Melo shouldn’t spend so much time looking outward when trying to find someone to blame for the Knicks’ defensive woes.
IS, that doesn’t surprise me too much. D’Antoni’s offenses have thrived on pick-and-roll play, 3-pt shooting, and ball movement. Melo is mediocre in all three departments.
Italian Stallion
March 20, 2011
I want to add one relevant point abut D’Antoni and defense.
His offensive system is very geared towards “floor spacing” to provide room for the pick and roll and because he also understands that a good 3 point shooter will tend to be WAY more efficient than just about any mid range or long jump shooter from inside the arc.
So he tends to look for players that are excellent 3 point shooters at every position except his for his roller (who was Amare, then Lee, and now Amare again). He’s so geared towards that quality, if given a choice between equally talented players, he’ll virtually always opt for the long range shooter. If you always opt for the shooter, you will tend to create teams that are a little lopsided towards offense because guys that can knock down 3s at 40% that are also great defenders don’t grow on trees.
Mike
March 21, 2011
Which is why the roller needs to be a great rebounder and defender. Queue Gortat as the Ultimate Suns / D’Antoni Roller :)
GovernorStephCurry
March 21, 2011
Amar’e is better than Lee. By a wide margin. Warrior fans are stuck with david lee, and we’re screwed. He steals rebounds.
I like Amar’e a lot. He’s a very good player. However Mike D knew he could only have one ball hog on his team. Melo would be too much, and Melo, while a good player, is nothing special really. Mike D should resign and be the Heat coach or the Warriors coach.
Thepeaceblogger
March 21, 2011
I used to criticize DB and most of his comment about players like Melo, AI or Amare not been superstars or just not good enough… What I did was pretty simple : Watch games, specially Denver and Cleveland games (today NY and Miami) to try to compare LBJ6 and Melo7 and it is amazing what watching games can teach you about a player tendency and lack of skills: Melo is such a great scorer and this is mainly is only skill on a basketball court, he can basically score from all over the place but ask him to play team ball and suddenly he is lost…. He doesn’t look or even try to make play for his team-mates and he is really poor at reading the opposition defence, what he will always do is score the ball whatever…
The difference with LBJ6 is so huge, that dude can basically do everything with the ball and on both side of the court, his knowledge of the game is off the chart and he will always try to make the right play for the team (unless he is on fire…), watching a dude who is 6″9 and 260 pounds doing stuff like that is quite amazing…
I mean no one is crying in Denver right now, yes the team had some good pieces from the trade but it seems that they are a better team now than before with Melo as the main offensive option, on the other side Cleveland is sinking totally because they have lost the primary and only 6″9 playmaker and “dude who can do everything well on both side”….
Anyway, I’m with DB here, I never thought that Melo and Amare could play together and I don’t see that happen, if Melo start to point fingers at others players about defence, I would love to see Amare reaction on and off the court…
Welcome in NY….
Italian Stallion
March 21, 2011
GovernorStephCurry,
I definitely don’t think GS is “stuck” with Lee at 6M less than Amare.
Lee is having a down year from an shooting efficiency point of view, but other than that he’s playing OK. The decline in efficiency is somewhat curious because it’s not like he exclusively benefited from playing in D’Antoni’s system. Lee was an efficient scorer playing for Isiah Thomas when Eddy Curry was still a dominant offensive weapon clogging up the middle. More than likely, he’s just not being used properly.
IMO GS’s major problem is that other than rebounding Bierdrins has become totally useless and Curry/Ellis is the worst defensive back court in the NBA (perhaps the worst I have ever seen).
GS should try to trade Ellis while his value is up and bring in a SG with some size that can play defense. Curry/Lee will be able to direct the offense. Getting rid of Biedrins’ bad contract is going to be a lot tougher. All they can do is hope he gets his act together.
David
March 21, 2011
Is there really a story? What the Knicks shipped out and gained was about a wash. And the Knicks were/are a slightly above 500 time. So playing 500 ball over 14 games is hardly an outlier. We also knew the Knicks had zero chance of actually wining a playoff series this year. Pre or post-trade. I just can’t see what the fuss is about. Apart from the mantra that scoring is overrated. But we knew that too. Or did we?
Matt
March 21, 2011
Doesn’t it seem like NY might have dug themselves back into the hole it took half a decade to climb out of?
Step 1: Isiah Thomas ruins your roster by acquiring overpaid, overrated, mostly one-sided players (Marbury, Francis, Curry).
Step 2: Sacrifice 5 seasons to rid your team of these contracts.
Step 3: Hire Isiah Thomas as a “special consultant” and offer Stoudemire and Melo over $45 million so they can shoot 45 times per game.
fricktho
March 21, 2011
Anthony and Amare are not ‘superstars’ but to lay blame and call them overrated isn’t necessarily giving them much credit. They are good players. I don’t have the numbers but I assume each is around .150 WP/48 for their careers, which is good for close to 8-9 WP each over the course of a season.
Now let’s say the Knicks are able to acquire Paul, keep Fields, and find some type of average center your looking at an outstanding team, that Anthony will probably get credit for being the leader of, but nonetheless that team would be quite good.
It doesn’t seem fair to say these two can’t play together. It’s an issue where the Knicks are severely undersized and starting Jeffries who they just pulled off his couch and is highly unproductive. Amare is at center. I’d love to see the Knicks fail as much as most, but there are personnel issues on their roster besides Anthony and Amare under-performing in NY relative to their careers so far.
Nerd Numbers
March 21, 2011
Fricktho,
A few facts. Melo was never above average during his rookie contract. Looking over 2008-2010 (his first extension) he was around a 0.115, so a little above average. Before heading to the Knicks this season his WP48 stood at around 0.148 (and that’s including an amazing November that he has since forgotten apparently). So Melo never hit the WP range you estimate for him. Now to be fair in NYK he is playing closer to 0.040 WP48, so he is underperforming and maybe that’s all the coach’s fault.
Amare was once a great great player. In his last two years with Phoenix he was below 0.150 WP48 (around average in 09 and around 0.140 in 10).
In short it’s not as if these players playing like they are should be a huge shock to NYK. The simple point is they got what they paid for and how they are doing is not actually as big of a surprise. The sad part is D’Antoni will likely get the blame and not the managers that spent 30+ million on average players.
stephanieg
March 21, 2011
Am I suffering from amnesia or wasn’t Amare once a .300 player? Or maybe .250.
Anyway, I don’t see why Melo wouldn’t be happy. He’s getting paid ridiculous amounts of money to play where he wants, he presumably loves NYC, and the amount and quality of the groupies there vs. Denver is probably quite the upgrade. Shouldn’t that be enough? I thought 90% of NBA players wanted to follow these steps:
1. score 20 ppg
2. ???
3. profit
todd2
March 21, 2011
Look up D’Antoni’s Phoenix squads: their fg% differential was near the top of the league.
dan
March 21, 2011
I think everyone have been overly dismissive of my suggestion that coaches can have a big impact on defense. One night, spend a couple of games closely watching a good defensive team. That means, when they’re on defense, don’t even look at the ball. Just watch how they all rotate, slide and double, etc.
What’s going on there is very complex. It requires a lot of mental concentration, and it’s probably not easy to teach. It’s even harder to convince players to play defense like that night-in and night-out in a relentless attempt to perfect the system (especially compared to how easy it is to convince a player to go out on the floor and shoot a lot of shots). That all comes from the coach.
Thibodeau is the perfect example. Look at what he did in Chicago, AFTER acquiring Boozer, who has always been a sub-par defender! I’m sorry, but you can’t simply dismiss that. I’d love to hear Professor Berri attempt to explain that one away, though.
Adam C. Madison
March 21, 2011
D’Antoni won’t have a problem finding another head coaching gig, so I wouldn’t worry too much about him. It’s unfortunate the media will skewer him, but hey, he’s European. What do you expect? ;)
Italian Stallion
March 21, 2011
One thing I don’t understand is why so many people hate the Knicks.
I am a life long Yankee fan. I fully understand why the rest of the country hates the Yankees. They’ve won more than any other franchise in professional sports, have vast financial resources they use to get whichever players they want and often bid them away from smaller markets etc…
The Knick haven’t won in over 35 years and haven’t even been good for so long it’s hard to remember the last decent team they had.
If it’s just a NY thing, then go fuck yourself. :-)
Italian Stallion
March 21, 2011
Matt,
They were doing fine until this Melo trade.
It’s possible to argue that trading away Hill/Jeffries and 1st round picks just to get Jeffries off the cap space 1 year earlier was a bad move, but they wanted enough cap space for 2 max free agents in the hope of landing James. It didn’t work . I was against it because IMO it was a high risk gambit that was very likely to fail, but the thinking was not irrational. They needed two slots to get that one player.
Before this trade they were a .500 team (or a tad better), had a young core with upside, and plenty of cap space for the next two years to fill the holes while the kids developed.
Now it’s going to be really tough to build a serious contender, but they do have some space left and could have a lot more depending on how they handle Billup’s 14m next year. If the cap domes down the prices on FAs will come down proportionally.
The problem is that they need a high level defensive minded C, a ton of pieces on the bench, and eventually a replacement for Billups. I don’t see how they can do all that with no assets, little potential upside development from young players, few picks, and not a lot of space.
Philip
March 22, 2011
dan,
I don’t see anyone dismissing your claim that coaches impact defense. Not sure where you’re getting that from.
I disagree with your assessment of Boozer. He’s a mediocre individual defender and a poor help-side defender. He got slammed for both in Utah. What people often omitted was that he was a phenomenal defensive rebounder, and capable enough of playing within a system. Utah’s “system” was just to allow a lot of perimeter penetration and foul players when they entered the lane. He was part of the problem, but hardly the whole problem, and was scapegoated by Jazz fans and the media for factors beyond his on-court play.
Boozer has been more of less the same player in Chicago – poor until the shot goes up, great after it does. Chicago’s a great defensive team largely because they’re a great defensive rebounding team, and Boozer’s a big part of that.
But he’s not the only personnel addition to Chicago. Bogans and Brewer have been a fantastic defensive tandem at the wing. Asik and Thomas have been fantastic at the center. Deng is healthy.
Credit to Thibs for getting the team to play well. But also recognize that he’s had the players to do it, and that characterizing Boozer as some kind of ugly duckling of matador defense who blossomed into a swan titanic shot deterrence is an inaccurate characterization of both coach and player alike.
Mike
March 22, 2011
I disagree that it is curious. Have a look at this picture and tell me it is a surprise. Tell me that ANYONE could shoot well with an injury that size. And while the article was from December, I’m pretty sure that gaping wound is still there. To quote from the article:
OUCH!
Adam C. Madison
March 22, 2011
To those letting D’Antoni off the hook:
David Thorpe, maybe the brightest mind over at ESPN (damning with faint praise? =P), loves to say it is a coach’s league. He says, to paraphrase the man, defense is essentially coaching.
To a large extent I agree, because defense is effort.
Personally I think that D’Antoni is ticked they traded for ‘Melo and sees the writing on the wall.
The NYK front office is doing him dirty, because it’s D’Antoni who helped escape the Knicks from basketball purgatory (remember that 2/3 of a solid season he got out of CHRIS DUHON?!). Can’t blame him if he doesn’t want to give his all into a seemingly hopeless task.
Ask George Karl how coaching ‘Melo is!