Carmelo Anthony is now part of the Houston Rockets after securing a buyout From the Atlanta Hawks after he was traded from the Thunder. He experience career lows in nearly every statistical category. He’s hoping for a fresh start after the OKC experiment didn’t go over well.
ESPN is now reporting that Chris Paul is defending the Rockets signing Anthony and how he also has been overly criticized during his career. Paul was a guest on ESPN’s The Jump and says the following;
“Obviously I’m a little biased because that’s one of my closest friends,” Paul said at training camp in Houston in an appearance on ESPN’s The Jump. “But you know, the disrespect that comes at him at times is unbelievable, you know what I mean? So for us, having one of the best players to ever play the game on our team, that’s a no-brainer.”
Many are skeptic about Anthony’s fit with the Rockets as he has traditionally thrived as the focal part of a team’s offense and usually needs isolation plays to be effective. The Rockets including head coach Mike D’Antoni believe otherwise and think they will be effective at putting all the pieces together.
“Dealing with great players that want to be here and want to make it work, it’s easy,” D’Antoni said. “He and James and Chris, they kind of figure out how they want to play and how they can play off each other and what will be most effective, and then they try to incorporate what we do into all that, and so far so good.”
Tucker was also a guest on The Jump and also feels that it won’t be hard to integrate Anthony into what the Rockets do well. He figures to be sharing time at the forward spot with Anthony.
“It hasn’t been a process at all, for me — honestly,” Tucker told ESPN’s Rachel Nichols and Tracy McGrady. “With this team, we don’t really play center, small forward, power forward; it’s more like filling spots, you know. And a lot of the time it’s who is guarding you. That’s what matters. If you’re going to be in the pick-and-roll, if you’re going to set the down-screen. Whatever’s happening, we’re doing a lot of matchup-based.
“So he can fill any one of those spots. … With our offense, it’s so easy. Chris and James make it so easy.”
The Rockets did lose defensive players Trevor Ariza and Luc Mbah Moute which were integral parts o their to the Wester Conference Finals las t season which ended in a deciding Game 7 which Chris Paul could not play in due to injury. We’ll see if Anthony can fill that void and get the Rockets past the Warriors this season.
Flip the page to see CP3 talk to The Jump about Melo