Carmelo Anthony is back in the NBA!
(PHOTO CREDIT: Mory Altaffer/AP.)
On Thursday night, Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN broke to the basketball world that Carmelo Anthony has been acquired by one of the NBA teams! He’s signing a non-guaranteed deal with our favorite people in the Northwest, the Portland TrailBlazers.
Carmelo is 35 years old and this MAY be his last shot in the league. So we have noted here in the past few days that the Portland TrailBlazers are NOT having a great start even though Damian Lillard is tearing it up. The big reason why NBA teams were so shy on signing him was because his defense has gotten so bad that his offense isn’t covering for it anymore. People point out the Thunder‘s first round loss to the Jazz in 2018. Then the Rockets signed him. He was more receptive to a bench role by then. Still, the defensive woes continued. He was gone after 10 games.
Now it’s not like the Blazers are taking a huge risk here. He is signed to a non-guaranteed deal and Portland can hardly get any worse. The offense still revolves around Dame and C.J. McCollum. What the Blazers can do is have Melo cover the inside and the in-between game that is frowned upon nowadays. At the very least, it opens up the offense for both Dame and C.J. Carmelo can cover the four spot that Zach Collins has left behind due to injury. It’s an easy upgrade offensively.
Of course, the problem is that Portland is 19th on defensive rating (109.9 points allowed per 100 possessions). They definitely need more help defensively and Anthony is likely not going to improve that. This will be the big test for the Blazers. It’s not that Carmelo’s ever been a great stopper but he’s 35 and only getting more decrepit.
Melo has played for Denver, New York, Oklahoma City, and Houston. His last two stops were not looked at favorably due to his atrocious defense and were likely the main reasons why he wasn’t brought back by an NBA team until Thursday.
We’ll see how the 2013 NBA scoring champion does. Good luck to all parties involved.
Rey-Rey is on Twitter at @TheNoLookPass.
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