5 Harsh Realities About Carmelo Anthony
#2 He's been a minus defender for all but 2-3 seasons of his prime
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A cursory glance through Anthony's advanced statistics on basketballreference.com yields us a stat that most superstars would be loath to have on their resume - Melo has never been a positive defender through 15 seasons in the league, according to the Defensive Box Plus Minus metric.
His best DBPM score of exactly 0.0 came in the 2011-12 season. Granted, this stat is not a very reliable one, especially for players who don't play on good defensive teams. However, it is somewhat damning that he's never logged a single season with a positive DBPM.
Melo was a passable, average defender during his best years (from 2007 to 2014). His effort has never been at fault, but his frame doesn't allow him to make the swift shuffling steps required by perimeter defenders to guard effectively on drives. He is best used as a help-side defender in the post, but he doesn't offer much rim protection there.
His defense has trailed off in the last 2 seasons as a result of imperfect conditioning.
Modified 20 Dec 2019, 17:09 IST