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Celtic Melo; Role Player

For all of his career, Carmelo Anthony has been the guy. The All-Star, the scorer, the big dog. He has built an incredible career on his elite offensive talents and competitiveness and has enjoyed the pressure and expectation of being ‘the man’, and delivering more often than not. He now brings those attributes to Boston, albeit in the twilight of his career, and the Celtics nab another NLL legend – Carmelo Anthony, in Boston Green.

The acquisition came at a price, with the Celtics having to give up team and fan favourite, All-Star point guard Kyle Lowry, along with Aminu and Calderon. In return, Anthony was joined by veteran point guard Darren Collison and the rights to Mike James, currently uncontracted. Lowry has been terrific during his time in Boston as was putting up excellent numbers across the board. Aminu was acquired in the Iguodala deal and was playing a terrific role. Both players, along with Jose Calderon, will be missed – but this deal was about streamlining the Celtics and making them harder to predict, and hopefully, defeat. Lowry heads to the Kings to lead their team and take on a big workload. Aminu is slated to start, Jose runs the bench unit – a great role beckons for all outgoing players.

What the Celtics add is the aforementioned Anthony; the killer instincts, the size and speed and the shooting prowess. They also add the oft-underrated Darren Collison; a lightning quick point guard who plays both ends of the floor and while not excelling in any one area, is good at everything. At full strength, both players will likely come off the bench for the Celtics, which will surely cause massive headaches for opponents, with effectively two good starters playing against bench players for the whole game. This brings me to the conclusion…

At 33 years of age, he isn’t the same Melo that he used to be – he has lost a step or two, he has lost some of his versatility and hasn’t been able to realise this and adapt to his declining athleticism. Anthony still is an elite shooter from all over the court and needs to keep refining the way he moves on the court and gets open for shots. Ideally, this is his twilight plan – an elite, off-the-ball scorer who keeps an opponent’s third best defender very, very honest.

If Anthony is able to do this, he can take the Celtics to a level they were perhaps unable to reach with Lowry running the show. Tyreke Evans has exploded back onto the NLL scene and is having a career year as a point guard.  He has had lots of faith and responsibility placed on him to run the point, and along with Collison, forms a terrific duo. This lead the Celtics to explore moving Lowry and after getting a call from the Kings, eventually pull the trigger to acquire Melo.

Anthony will have to take his ego out of the equation and take what minutes are available to him. He will have to not let the ball stick. He will have to run hard and work hard on defence.