Carmelo Anthony, the number 3 of the legendary 2003 draft (LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh …) continues to score points in the NBA. That is what it has always done. Non-stop: with those old-school movements, those medium-distance suspensions that are almost in danger of extinction in a League that already looks almost exclusively at mathematical efficiency: or triples or trays. Melo is old school: cleared up, body, jab step, lash: basket. One after the other to get, now, among the ten who have scored the most in NBA history. In the loss of his Blazers in Atlanta (123-114), Melo he added 14 points and brought his total to 27,318. Elvin Hayes comes out of the top 10 and he enters, who now has Moses Malone, ninth with 27,409 points, on target).
We must put the career of Carmelo, an extraordinary forward who has been questioned because he never played a Finals (Conference only) and, in recent years, because basketball evolved into a style that was not his. A player who after his glory years in the Denver Nuggets (28.9 points on average in the 2006-07 season) and the New York Knicks (28.7 in the 2012-13) could be out of the NBA right now.
It’s that tough: things didn’t go well for the Thunder and since then (2017-18 season) he was traded to save the Hawks, cut, minimum signed by the Rockets, pushed aside after ten games, traded to the Bulls as dead weight and cut again. That was on February 1, 2019. There the door of his career seemed to close, without a team for months, training alone and among rumors of bargain contracts and questions about how efficient it might be in an applicant. He didn’t have a team again until November 19, 2019, when injuries swept through the Blazers and they bet on him, with nothing to lose. Since then he has played 122 games in Oregon, more than half as a substitute (something previously unimaginable) and has scored another 1,767 points. Blazers average 13.6 (this month he turns 37) and in these two seasons he has passed nine players to enter the top 10 all-time points: Kevin Garnett, Tim Duncan, Paul Pierce, Dominique Wilkins, Hakeem Olajuwon… and now Hayes. Carmelo, the man with the four Olympic medals, is a legend.
Beyond the milestone, very special, of Carmelo, it was a bad night for some exhausted Blazers, on tour and who had just won in Boston and had to lock themselves in their Atlanta hotel due to a tornado warning. After surpassing 30 points in three quarters (102-95 at the end of the third) they stayed at 19 (21-19) in the last, without gasoline. Damian Lillard had 33 points with 8 assists, CJ McCollum had 20 points and Norm Powell 15. But the Hawks won, with another great collective game at McMillan style and control of the situation of Trae Young (21 points, 6 rebounds, 11 assists) with a cataract of European points: in the first half Bogdan Bogdanovic (23 of his 25, 7/14 total in triples), after the break Danilo Gallinari ( 21 of his 28, 7/10 in triples). Another notable victory for a much more competitive Hawks since the change of coach.
The two teams are in a similar situation and with almost identical balances: 36-30 the Hawks and 36-29 the Blazers. Georgia’s are fifth behind the East, a game and a half behind the Knicks and in a fight to escape the play in with Heat (half ahead) and Celtics (one and a half ahead now). In the West, the Blazers are seventh, in play in but with only one defeat more than the Lakers and Mavericks in a millimeter fight that will resolve the fifth, sixth and seventh places.
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