I'm not sure why people keep harping on the fact that 'Melo doesn't pass enough... Look at these players on the court with him - would you pass to any of them? Melo is a FORWARD. It's not up to him to make others around him better. I admit, he's not Lebron or Bird. But he's still pretty darn good.
This is what brings me to my first problem with this team. THE GUARDS SUCK. I'm not using hyperbole here when I say this: A group of guards have to be amongst the worst set in the NBA, I'm talking bottom 5 in the league? Let's try to name teams that have a worst collection of guards than ours.
The problems with this team in the Carmelo era began, funny enough, 3 seconds after the smartest decision was made. Grabbing Tyson Chandler was a shrewd decision. Our options were limited and the fan base was tired of being told to wait another year. Holding out for hope we could land Paul or D-Will would've been foolish. After the lockout the rules changed, nobody is turning down 20-30 mil. But signing Chandler and not using the amnesty on AMAR'e was idiotic. It doomed Anthony's run i NY. Any fool understood that then, and we are all witnesses now to how lethal that choice was.
Melo-Amare-TC was never going to work, in a basketball sense. I realize STAT was electric when he first arrived, and i know we wanted a second star to help carry the offensive load. But we knew all along STAT had a 3-yr expiration date, and we already saw how we got swept against BOS with Melo-STAT. Dolan allowed loyalty to blind himself....
It was obvious... even more so since we were a team with NO PG. Keep Billups with Melo-TC. HIs contract runs out after season... We have money for another max.
The next foolish move also comes from the front office. Why is Chris SMith on this team? Why do we cater to JR? If the owner-GM-coach want to mock us with that tool on the roster... than why should we even care about this team?
Now... the next foolish decision: Not even talk to the arguably greatest bball coach in history? Phil Jax? Even if Woodson was halfway decent, this was still foolish.
It's hard to win with a coach like this. Felton should be the backup, getting 15 minutes a night. JR should be benched right now. I still don't know why we even brought him back.
With this coach, and these guards, Melo has no chance.