As with so many mid-range gunners with questionable defensive chops1, the discourse around Carmelo Anthony over the past few years has been fraught. We’re not going to delve into that here, but 11 games into this season, the Carmelo Anthony of 2021 seems a noticeably different player than the Denver Nuggets and New York Knicks vintages.
Carmelo is taking a career high 51% of his shots from beyond the arc per Cleaning the Glass. If you exclude his 10 game sojourn in Houston (more on that below), Carmelo has never attempted more than 39% of his shots from three. He hit that mark during his lone OKC season and again last season with the Portland Trailblazers. Lost amidst the sturm und drang around Carmelo is that post-Knicks Carmelo has adapted to a changing game. That, as much as his voluminous scoring record, should be a part of his legacy.
Since those Knicks days, Carmelo has typically attempted under 20% of his shots at the rim per CTG, in the bottom quintile for forwards league-wide, with the bulk of his attempts coming from the mid-range (surprise!) As a high-volume mid-range scorer, Carmelo’s accuracy there has usually hovered around the low 40%s. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that Carmelo is a more than serviceable three point shooter, in the high 30%s fairly consistently.2 Which is why the shift in Carmelo’s shot profile is noteworthy. 16% of his shot attempts so far this season have come at the rim, in line with his post-Knicks numbers. The increased share of three point attempts comes entirely from a decrease in mid-range attempts. Only a third of Carmelo’s shot attempts over 11 games have come from what Cleaning the Glass classifies as the mid-range, a 37% decrease from last season and a career low by a big margin.
Why does this matter? First, the impact on Carmelo’s efficiency: Carmelo is scoring 1.27 points per shot attempt, by far a career high and in the 87th percentile for forwards league-wide. He is putting up an EFG% of 62% on the back of 50% accuracy from beyond the arc, both career highs and in the 85th percentile of all forwards. He is going to cool off from that 50% mark, but after shooting right around 40% from three in each of the last two seasons, there is reason to think that Carmelo is still a more efficient scorer than he has ever been.
The second reason this matters is its impact on what shots are available to the rest of his teammates. On a recent Hollinger & Duncan pod, Nate Duncan provided a helpful reminder that where a player shoots from matters for both the expected payoff of the shot (3>2), but also for where the player is standing on the floor and the knock on impacts of that. Let’s quickly look at some film. In the first quarter of the Lakers’ wild win over the Charlotte Hornets, Gordon Hayward stunts from the wing on a Russell Westbrook-Anthony Davis pick and roll. Notice Carmelo standing well beyond the arc, giving Miles Bridges a longer closeout:
Carmelo shot 7/10 from three in this game, he was hot. Watch what happens on a similar play in the fourth quarter:
With Carmelo again spacing out on the wing and LaMelo Ball glued to him, there is no one in position to stunt at Westbrook’s drive. Given a runway, Westbrook has no trouble finding his way to the rim for a layup.
(Sidebar: I’m a little confused as to why Bridges chases Westbrook, a questionable pull-up shooter, over Davis’ pick instead of shooting the gap there.)
Carmelo’s hot shooting meant that LaMelo was entirely too preoccupied to stunt in the way Hayward did to deter Westbrook’s drive in the first quarter. LaMelo is literally looking at Carmelo!
With Carmelo, Westbrook, and Davis on the floor, the Lakers have attempted 42% of their shots at the rim per CTG in 248 possessions, in the 99th percentile of all lineups league-wide. That number could be a bellwether for the Lakers as I detailed in an earlier post. An important caveat is that the Lakers generally attempt a lot of their shots at the rim (lineups with Westbrook and Davis, but without Carmelo, are still in the 96th percentile league-wide) and on/off numbers are especially noisy in these small samples.
One final caveat: We have seen a version of this movie before. Remember that star-crossed 10-game Rockets stint? Carmelo’s shot profile was virtually identical to this current 11-game spell, across a similar number of possessions. Carmelo Anthony has been one of the feel good stories thus far this season and one can only hope things turn out differently than they did in Houston.
See: DeMar DeRozan.
This is in marked contrast to DeRozan, who has consistently been a subpar from beyond the arc, albeit on many fewer shot attempts (source: CTG):