Melo will hog the ball and kill the chemistry between the other 2 ball hogs.
Please tell me you aren't labelling Chris Paul (arguably the greatest pass-first PG since John Stockton) as a ball hog?
Harden is fair game though. Man Harden and Melo on the same team would be frightening, and not in a good way.
Chris Paul would basically touch the ball 3 times a night as a random spot up shooter (e.g. Steve Nash in LA).
Harden finished 2nd in AST%, ahead of CP3 last year. He also finished ahead of John Wall, LeBron James, and Ricky Rubio. It's not entirely fair to characterize him as a ball hog either, and if you are going to do so, it'd probably be wise to acknowledge the different degrees of ball hoggery, seeing as Anthony ranked 123rd in AST%, behind noted facilitators Sean Kilpatrick and Jamal Crawford.
Harden finished 2nd in AST% last year after he (and this is something he openly admitted to) took on a personal mission to prove wrong all the people out there who criticised him for being a ball hog.
Everybody knows Harden is a skilled passer and playmaker when he wants to be, last year is proof of what he can excel a playmaker when he's motivated to NOT be a selfish ball hog. Every other season of his career prior to that is proof that his natural instinctive preference (when he doesn't have something personal to prove) is to hog the ball on every possession and take 5,000 shots.
Chris Paul on the other hand is the complete opposite. He's very much proven that he can be a dominant offensive player when he wants to (he's averaged between 21 - 25 PPG in his last 3 playoff runs) but his natural preference is to make plays for others as a first priority, and only really score when he has to. That is the very opposite of a ball hog.
Melo falls in the Harden category. He is actually a very skilled passer and a very intelligent playmaker at his size/position, and his consistent excellence when playing for USA Basketball proves that he can be an outstanding team player when he is motivated to be. But most of his career he's been surrounded by garbage players, so I can imagine he's probably felt like a lone man on an island - he hasn't had many teammates he can trust or depend on, so he hogs the ball because he feels like he has to do everything himself, or else it wont get done.
I think that these three guys are very CAPABLE of making this thing work if they go in with the same type of mindframe that KG/Pierce/Ray took into Boston - have trust in each other, and each man sacrifices for the greater good of the team. Whether that would actually happen...that's yet to be seen.
Also, it's not entirely fair to judge Carmelo's "ball hoggery" based on his assist numbers compared to that of Chris Paul and James Harden. Chris Paul is a pure PG. James Harden came in to the league as a PG, but due to his scoring ability has spent most of his career at the SG spot - be he has legit PG skills. Carmelo Anthony is a scoring wing who just happens to be a fairly skilled passer.
His Assist average (2.9 APG) and assist rate (14.5%) last season were among the lowest of his career, and yet they do not rate that far behind our own Gordon Hayward (3.5 APG, 18.2% AR) - a guy who I've never heard anybody refer to as a ball hog, and who is often praised for being a skilled playmaker for a wing.
In fact if you look at the career numbers for both guys, they are darn near identical...
Melo:
3.1 APG
16.2% AR
Hayward:
3.5 APG
18.7% AR
So if you want to brand Melo a ball hog based on those assist numbers, I guess Danny Ainge just signed us a ball hog of our very own too.
Topic: Melo to Houston will occur within 2 weeks (espn sp). Jabari parker in trade talk (Read 9692 times)