The X-Factor That Will Decide Carmelo & New York’s Season

With the regular season in its last few months, the cream of the league has risen to the top, and that means it’s time for prognosticators to start talking playoff seeds and possible matchups. One team once believed to be in the pretender category — the New York Knicks — have played their way into the cream category. A large part of New York’s return to the upper tier of the Eastern Conference after the Isiah Decade is the return of the Carmelo Anthony we watched in Denver since 2003. Unfortunately, for all his efficient brilliance this season, there’s one thing ‘Melo’s struggled with: scoring at the rim. He’ll have to improve his performance in the restricted area if the Knicks are going to become contenders to Miami’s throne.

Carmelo Anthony is an inverse scorer: that which is difficult for others is borderline easy for him; that which is easy for others, he has struggled with this season. Finishing at the rim is the easiest place for NBA players to score. It doesn’t take a MENSA member to understand why. Shooting always becomes less challenging the closer you get to the bucket. But not, apparently, for Carmelo Anthony. This is peculiar because Carmelo has shot well at the rim in the past, but during this — supposedly his watershed season; the one where he gets it, for lack of a better phrase — we’ve seen his shooting percentage at the rim fall to the lowest level of his career.

Carmelo Anthony is only shooting 55 percent at the rim this season, per Hoopdata. That might sound good, and if it were his overall field goal percentage, it would be. But the league average at the rim is 66.8 percent. So Carmelo Anthony is more than 10 percentage points below the league average finishing around the bucket. Carmelo’s percentage at the rim is the fifth-worst among all forwards in the league who average over 20 minutes a game this season and have appeared in at least 20 games. Only Shane Battier, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, Kyle Korver and Stephen Jackson are worse. All of those guys — except the flailing-armed Mbah a Moute — are spot-up options on the wing and average less than two attempts a game at the bucket. In fact, if you look at that same segment of forwards in the NBA, only Zach Randolph averages over five attempts per game at the rim while still shooting under the league average, though he’s also over 60 percent. With those numbers in mind, it doesn’t seem like Carmelo is flourishing as much as the press, and the Knicks record, would have you believe.

You must be wondering then how Carmelo is playing so efficiently (career-high PER of 23.8) and shooting almost 45 percent overall if he’s so far below the league average at the rim? That’s why he’s the inverse scorer in the NBA. While most NBA scorers struggle with the low efficiency and high degree of difficulty associated with long two-pointers, that’s Carmelo’s bread and butter. While Anthony still struggles in the 3-9 foot range, (38 percent), he’s shooting 46.5 percent from 10-15 feet this season, 43 percent from 16-23 feet (that’s the same as LeBron, despite averaging over a shot more per game from that distance), and 40.5 percent from three, which translates to a 61.4 percent effective field goal percentage from beyond the arc. That last number is a couple percentage points below LeBron, but Carmelo is taking more than double the attempts. In fact, among forwards, only Steve Novak, Mike Dunleavy, Kyle Korver and Kevin Durant are averaging over four three-pointers per game while also shooting them at a better rate than ‘Melo; Carmelo also attempts more three-pointers than all of them, even specialists like Korver and Novak. That’s select company — only Durant is a comparable scorer from outside the restricted area at the forward position. But, again, we come back to Anthony’s struggles at the rim. Just check out his shooting chart (via NBA.com/stats) from this season:

And really, after shooting over 47 percent from the field and over 43 percent from beyond the arc in the first part of this season, since the turn of the year Carmelo has only shot 42 percent overall, and he’s down to just 35.8 percent on three-pointers in February. Anthony’s overall shooting mark on the season (44.7 percent) is the fifth-best mark of his 10-year career, and almost a full percentage point off his career field goal percentage of 45.6. Plus, of those four seasons where he’s shot worse than this season, two of them were his rookie and sophomore seasons in the league.

Keep reading to hear how Anthony can fix his problems at the rim…

So when we talk about Carmelo Anthony having a season that warrants MVP consideration, and he seems to believe so as evidenced by what he told The New York Post, what are we thinking? That he’s finally bought into the team philosophy and is using the attention defenses pay him to find the open man? Well, he’s only averaging 2.8 assists a game, tied for his career-low. Maybe that he’s finally bought into the idea that the game isn’t just played on one side of the court, and he’s buckling down on defense? Except, the team’s giving up a point more per 100 possessions when he’s on the court, according to 82games.com.

It probably sounds ridiculous to accuse Anthony of anything but great play, since the Knicks are still second in the Eastern Conference, and again, Carmelo is sporting a career-high PER while posting the best overall plus/minus rating on the team, via 82games.com. The Knicks are also scoring eight points more per 100 possessions when he’s on the court. He is making a difference, and his deadliness from outside the restricted area means defenses are paying him enough attention to get J.R. Smith, Raymond Felton, Steve Novak, Jason Kidd and others open behind the arc, where the Knicks are still shooting at a respectable 38.1 percent, sixth-best in the league. But why can’t Carmelo finish better at the rim? What’s preventing him from raising his game to the truly elite status he — and many New York observers — believe he’s already at?

So far this season, according to NBA.com, Carmelo has attempted 274 shots in the restricted area, connecting on 139 of them. That’s a 50.7 percent conversion rate, which is awful (and the discrepancy from Hoopdata’s numbers above has more to do with the differing definitions of shots at the rim vs. shots in the restricted area). Anyway, looking at ‘Melo’s restricted area attempts gives us a better idea of why he’s faltering so much in comparison to the rest of the league, and most of the rest of his career.

Take New York’s 102-96 loss to Boston on January 7 of this year. In the game, Carmelo was a terrible 6-for-26 from the floor, and that included four misses from in close. Here are all four:

Usually, ‘Melo isn’t this bad, since he connects on better than half of his attempts in the restricted area, and on 55 percent of his attempts at the rim. But what we can glean from this Boston game is why or how he’s missing this much. Unless Kidd or Felton is tossing the ball into him on the block or at the elbow, the majority of his attempts near the rim occur when a defender overplays his deadly jumper, and he puts his head down to drive. He, literally, puts his head down, and while he’s capable of a terrific pass, once he’s decided to get to the rim all bets on dumping the ball to Amar’e/Chandler/insert frontcourt player are off, and interior help defenders can leave their man to help out on him.

Carmelo will occasionally be waylaid enough in his path to the bucket that he’ll fail to get a shot off. Usually, that means he passes out to an open shooter on the wing, smashes into the help defender drawing an offensive or defensive call (which is dependent on when the help defender arrived and who is calling the game), or he’ll turn the ball over by getting stripped or having his pass intercepted because he’s not making a decisive decision once the help defender stymies his initial drive. Basically, if you have a good defensive team (a Chicago, an Indiana, a San Antonio), one that collapses on the driving player once their perimeter defenders are beat off the dribble, Carmelo can sometimes struggle. He gets frustrated on gimme buckets near the hoop, but on most of his misses from in close, it’s happening because he’s taking on an extra defender, one that has rotated over and helped affect his shot.

If Carmelo can make better decisions once he beats his man on the perimeter, or find a way to circumvent the extra rotating defender, he’ll shoot for a better average at the rim, and the Knicks will do better. This whole piece might sound like nit-picking of the highest order, but New York is one of the few teams many feel can really push Miami in a seven-game series. Part of that belief is Carmelo’s ability to go shot for shot with the likes of LeBron and Dwyane Wade, and his teammates ability to knock down open looks on the perimeter. That optimism is contingent on Carmelo playing like the star many believe him to be (myself included), but once a defender has manned up on him enough to force him to get to the hoop, his percentages of success dwindle against the better teams. It’s those better teams he’ll face in the playoffs, and he better figure out a way to improve in that area if New York has any chance against Miami.

Why have the Knicks (and ‘Melo) fallen off since their hot start?

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