Originally Posted by
Pelicanidae
Boogie will probably not sit for the entire season. He's already got the boot off, and his rehabbing is on track. If he's out ten months, that takes us to November (starting February), which would mean he would barely miss 15 games or so. Even if there's a setback, and he's out a full year, he'll be back by around all-star break. For him to be out the entire year would require some serious problems to occur.
What qualifies as a 'REAL basketball expert'? Because we, thanks to the wonders of the internet, have a wealth of advanced details and statistics to look at. Some of these people on the internet watch more games, study more film, monitor more statistics, and know more history than 90% of your TV analysts or ESPN columnists. If you want an example of how amazingly accurate the 'REAL basketball experts' can be, go look at the predictions for the Pelicans vs Blazers round one series this post-season.
The fact is, Melo is about to turn 34 at the end of this month. So he's very much on the wrong side of 30, and is overwhelmingly unlikely to improve at any aspect of his game: what we should expect from a player in their mid thirties is a decline. Carmelo has never been very efficient, but that's got worse: the last two seasons he's played have both been top 5 worst FG% seasons in his career. In fact, this season was his career worst. The last time he put up rebounding averages this low, he was 20, and 1.3 assists per game is a career low as well: which is saying something, cause he's never been a passer.
With an ORTG of 104 and a DRTG of 109, he's got a net rating of -5. That is bad. That's not an anomaly for this year either, the last time he put up a positive net rating it was 2013-14. His PER has declined every year for the last 5 years. It's been 5 years since his true shooting % was at or above league average. He hasn't put up a positive DBPM in his career, and the one time he wasn't a negative (he had a DBPM of 0.0) was 7 years ago. That's unsurprising, because he can't defend the three: in a league where that's more and more necessary every year, opponents shot 7.3% better from 3 against him than their averages.
So given all of that, what does that tell us? It tells us that the only possible positive value he could give to a team is if he accepted his defensive issues, accepted his inefficiency, and agreed to be some kind of 6th man in his declining years, where his sole responsibility is the chucking that he's always been so known for. Which would be fine, except we already have footage of him saying that he will not come off the bench, and will not even discuss it.
He is a below par player, who refuses to acknowledge it. He cannot defend, he cannot score efficiently, nor is he the kind of guy who can will you to wins with his intangibles (only one double digit win share season in his career).
Mythrol has a good point. Melo blows.