Carmelo Anthony has to be the most talked about NBA player, who isn't currently an NBA player, in the history of the NBA. Anthony isn't ready to retire, but he hasn't played in an NBA game since Nov. 8, 2018, when he posted two points on 1-of-11 shooting, including 0 for 6 from 3-point range, in 20 minutes for the Houston Rockets.
A few days later, the Rockets announced they were "parting ways" with Melo. On Jan. 22, 2019, they officially did so, trading him to the Chicago Bulls, who subsequently waived him. Melo had been a shell of himself for a few years, and in 2017-18, he was an almost unplayable defensive liability come playoff time with the Oklahoma cityThunder. Still, there was hope that it would work with Houston in its spread offense, and to only give that experiment 10 games was a move that apparently surprised Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta, who recently did a Q&A with Ian Begley of SNY:
"You know, it's really unusual because I never really got a chance to meet Melo but all I heard is what a gentleman he was and that he was going to play whatever part or role on the team that the coaches wanted him to play," Fertitta told Begley. "And basketball ops decided to make a decision and, you know, it kinda surprised me too, as a fan of the Houston Rockets. But I know what I know and I know what I don't know. And if my basketball ops thought that we should move on, then I sure wasn't going to tell them not to, even though I thought that Melo's one the greatest players to ever play the game."
Fertitta went on to say that not only should Anthony still be in the league, he's good enough to be a starter.
SNY: Do you believe Anthony can contribute to a team this season?
FERTITTA: One hundred percent. Let me tell you: there's a bunch of teams and I guarantee you if there's 150 starters for the 30 teams that Carmelo Anthony is still one of the top 150 players in the National Basketball Association.
This is obviously what makes the Carmelo situation so interesting, outside of just his name itself -- he probably is still good enough to be playing, and perhaps even contributing in a relatively meaningful way, in the NBA. Whether he is still good enough to start is something entirely different. His defense is hopeless in today's game and he isn't really all that good a shooter or even one-on-one player anymore, which are pretty much his only NBA skills remaining.
But still, let's say Melo can still hit close to 35 percent of his 3s, at best, and exploit the occasional mismatch off switches, that's only in a vacuum. Line up the best 300 or so players in the world, just based on pure basketball skill and not factoring for fit, situation or team timeline, and Melo might still be one of those 300. But in reality, the fit, situation and team timelines are everything.
In essence, the good teams are looking strictly on-court, and they have players who are better than him -- even the role players -- and when a team is actually trying to win right now, certainly at a high level, the few good things Melo might still be able to do aren't impactful enough to outweigh the myriad things he can't do. His defense alone is a non-starter.
Now, for teams who don't care so much about winning right now, perhaps you could argue Melo has some off-court value -- the veteran leader, the locker room presence, the former star passing down tricks of the trade in practice, and, notably, on the bench. But first off, would Melo even want to be a deep-bench guy? Besides that, none of this is really about how Melo can help younger players; all the talk around Anthony is that he can flat-out still play.
So through that purely on-court lens, we've ruled out most of the good teams. Then with the bad teams, they need to develop young players who need the ball, while Melo, if he's going to be any good at all, needs the ball, too. Why in the world would any team that's going nowhere in the present anyway stunt the growth of its future to give Melo a few more minutes in the sun?
Again, this isn't a vacuum. Is Melo still one of the best 300 basketball players in the world? Probably. But every NBA situation is different, and as it stands, there just aren't that many teams that Melo neatly fits into.