Carmelo Anthony: Overrated

This season, Carmelo Anthony, Small Forward for the New York Knicks, is making over 4 times the league average. Last year, when he was traded from the Denver Nuggets to the Knicks, he signed a 3 year contract, worth $65 million. Although this placed Carmelo in the top 5 NBA players in terms of salary, many thought he was worth this money. Last year, he ranked third in the league in scoring, at 25.6 points a game. Considering how prolific of a scorer he is, and how much money every team was willing to pay him, many believe he is one the best players in the NBA.

Carmelo isn't a top player in the NBA though, and doesn't deserve to be treated as such. This year, the Knicks are 9-12 with Carmelo playing. In the last 8 games, since Carmelo has been injured, the Knicks are 7-1. This is because scoring, as a measure of evaluation, is tremendously overvalued in the NBA. The ability to score points, no matter how it is done, is the central figure when evaluating a player. This doesn't correlate to team success, however. The biggest mistake in overstating scoring, is that most people accept points-per-game at face value. That is, they don't look at how efficiently those points were scored. David Berri, points out that Anthony's shooting percentage is below the average small forward for 2 and 3 point shots. He also attempted an extra 11 shots over 48 minutes compared to the average small forward.

These stats are important, because scoring is only important if done efficiently. Carmelo scores a lot of points, because he shoots a lot. He also misses a lot though. In fact, he misses more than he makes a shot. This shows the team is worse off when Carmelo goes off for a high point total, but misses a ton of shots. If Carmelo didn't take a shot, it would leave a chance for someone else on the team to take that shot, someone who might take a higher percentage shot, leaving the team better off. On top of that, Carmelo doesn't contribute in many other ways. He rebounds less than the average small forward, and turns it over more. There's a reason the Knicks have been doing better since Carmelo left. That reason is that he doesn't help very much. He's been replaced in town by newcomer Jeremy Lin, who is scoring at a much more efficient rate, while also recording high assist totals. Hopefully the league learns from Carmelo and moves away from only evaluating scoring in the future.

Super Bowl Dilemma

With around a minute left in the Super Bowl, the New England Patriots were leading the New York Giants by two points. The Giants, however had the ball on the Patriots' 6 yard line. The Giants were well within field goal range, which, if successful, would have put the Giants up by one point. Understanding this, Bill Belichick, the head coach of the Patriots, instructed his team to allow the Giants' running back, Ahmad Bradshaw, to score a touchdown and allow his team one final chance of scoring with one minute left.

This put the game in an unusual situation, as it seemed the Patriots were trying to let the Giants score, however, the Giants weren't so willing to accept the touchdown. On the next play, Ahmad Bradshaw took the ball, and although it looked like he tried to fall down before the end zone, he ended up scoring the touchdown. This gave the ball back to the Patriots with 57 seconds, and a chance to win the game.

This outcome, although maybe not instructed by the Giants' coach, was desirable for both teams. The Patriots figured that because the ball was inside the 10 yard line, which as Belichick says makes the chance of conversion 90%, they'd rather a chance to win the game than watch the ball go through the uprights with no time left to respond. That 90% seems very likely from the Patriots' perspective. However, from the Giants perspective, this play also makes sense. Taking the 6 points in that situation is much safer than risking a 10% chance of losing the Super Bowl. They especially didn't want to risk it after the Patriots advanced to the Super Bowl after a missed field goal by the Ravens' kicker two weeks earlier. Ahmad Bradshaw ended up making the smart play in that situation, and his team ended up winning the Super Bowl.