Kenyon Martin and Tyson Chandler Keep it Real Regarding Carmelo Anthony and George Karl
Normally QFTR never comes closer than a ten foot pole to the hype world of “who said what” and to the hype world of “whose personality is on top and whose personality is not”. Those are among the superficial worlds found everywhere in publishing but that are especially dominant in the dismal world of sports publishing in the United States. For many Internet sites that do get substantial traffic, hype is pretty much or literally all they do. Most Internet sports sites that have a substantial amount of traffic are 24/7 into the “who said what” world. And then visitors who hang out at those sites make dumb comments about who said what. Although reading those comments is almost always a complete waste of time, I have a strange fascination with them and so I have the bad habit of every once in a while wasting time (more or less) reading through a lot of dumb twitter type comments at Corporate and wanna be corporate basketball sites.
Basketball forums are far superior to corporate hype Sites. At least on the basketball forums people can make much longer, intelligent comments and even short essays if they care to.
The two “who said whats” covered in this QFTR Report were almost a week ago now. Hype and hype-related news goes stale in 24-48 hours so QFTR is covering stale hype in this Report, laugh out loud. These quotes were superficially but quickly mentioned by probably all of the corporate and the corporate wanna be basketball Sites. Those Sites are monkey see and monkey do; they all have the same hype and they generally all have it on the same day.
From a technical publishing perspective, hype news is what the traditional sports writers mostly do nowadays. And due to the desperation that exists in Corporate hype land to hold onto traffic and due to the monkey see monkey do thing, when a sports writer of one of the handful of giant sports publishing corporations produces a “who said what” hype article, it is linked to one way or another by ALL of the sites in Sports Publishing Corporation Hype Land.
This is a rare instance where QFTR will link to not one but two "who said what's". Two players made statements that we could not resist linking to here.
QFTR claims it is unique and the decision to very seldom go into the hype-related “he said, she said” world is one thing of many things that prove that it is. The "who said what" world, or in other words the “he said, she said” world, like all worlds in the hype galaxy, is mostly a vast hype wasteland. For one thing, in that galaxy no one ever proves which side is correct in the argument. Instead, and amazingly, the ridiculously easy to please audience seems to be content with the little argument itself. The mostly brainless and brain dead residents of hype land pick a side (very often the wrong side, laugh out loud) and perhaps post a tiny, trivial twitter somewhere showing whose side they are on, and then they move on without ever knowing which side of the little argument was really correct.
A side irony is that sometimes, if the kiddies making dumb comments at the Corporate sites knew the context of the little controversy they commented on and they knew which side was really correct, they would know that the argument was actually not really little at all. But hype land is trivial 24/7 meaning that both the trivial and the non-trivial is treated as trivial and meaning that who is really right in the controversy is never discussed at all let alone resolved.
Whereas at QFTR (that strange and unique bird) we are always determining beyond a shadow of a doubt who is right and who is wrong about basketball controversies. With its' greater than 99.9% non-hype content and with its' reality-based approach, QFTR gets only a very small amount of very specialized traffic and would have shut down years ago if substantial traffic was an objective. But instead, the highest quality and the most unique basketball content are among the main objectives and traffic is definitely not.
But in another, more narrow sense this unusual QFTR Report is NOT a waste of time because it will illustrate an important point that has very seldom if ever been fully stated or even fully realized by QFTR before: QFTR is pro player and has a strong player perspective on basketball. It may be a little hard to see but the pro-player base is there to see if you look hard enough. What this means is that if you polled NBA players on the hundreds (thousands counting all of the ratings) of claims QFTR has made about pro basketball over the years the players would vote in a landslide that in most cases what QFTR states to be true is true. Players would vote in favor of QFTR much more heavily than the dumbed down and rose colored glasses wearing general public would.
The primary mission of QFTR is to explain exactly how basketball playoff series and championships are won and lost. Players celebrate the most and they gain the most from winning championships. Therefore, it is logical at a fundamental level that QFTR is pro player.
So in this Report we will pay a rare visit to the “who said what” world that so many other sites waste almost all of their time on. From a broad and general perspective this Report is a waste of time. But from the perspectives just mentioned, it’s not really a waste of time.
We are posting links to two “who said whats”. One of them (the one involving Kenyon Martin) was reported out to the vast corporate hype wasteland by a sports writer named Sam Amick who according to Wikipedia is with the Sacramento Bee. But the Bee is undoubtedly owned by some huge corporation which is owned by some other huge corporation etc. etc. and so Amick’s hype writings appear in Sports Illustrated which is owned by CNN which in turn is owned by multi-billionaire Ted Turner. And his writings are fully or partially cross posted or linked to by numerous other corporate sites owned by other billionaires (and by those all hype, all the time independent Sites aka the corporate wanna be Sites).
In the US, as of 2012, essentially everything notable is owned by multi-billionaires or by the Chinese government, laugh out loud. (But it’s not really funny if you know what I’m saying, and I digress.)
The other “who said what” involves what Tyson Chandler had to say to Michael Irvin who has a sports radio show on WQAM Radio in Miami.
So now with that important context out of the way, it’s on to the real basketball content, two very recent statements by two well above average defensive players. Before we get to what they said, let's make sure everyone is up to speed on how George Karl operates….
GEORGE KARL OFTEN TRASHES PLAYERS UNJUSTIFIABLY
At QFTR we have been reporting for almost half a decade exactly how and why George Karl is a terrible NBA playoffs coach. The benefits have been enormous. For one thing, by focusing heavily on Karl, we have efficiently and effectively learned a lot about exactly how playoff series are won and lost. Karl teaches a lot about how to LOSE playoff series, although on the other hand he is pretty good about coming up with ways to squeeze out a few extra regular season wins.
But also, every once in a while we report on some especially ridiculous and/or especially false thing that Karl has stated. But we only report on a very small sample of what Karl claims. We don’t have the time to Report on every dumb or false thing Karl says because it would be a full time job and it would make absolutely no sense to have that as a full time job, laugh out loud.
QFTR has on many occasions pointed out that Karl often makes nasty, false, derogatory comments about former and occasionally even current Denver Nuggets players to reporters in the press who worship George Karl. Karl has always been worshipped most if not all of the time by the sports writers of the Denver Post and ESPN as well.
QFTR thinks Karl unjustifiably trashes players not because he is a total jerk and not because he is a total idiot but because he is the ultimate career climber. Very possibly, deep down Karl knows that some or most of what he says is garbage. Whether or not he knows that what he says is false, Karl keeps putting players down first and foremost because by doing so he keeps his own reputation up. According to Karl, anything and everything wrong with the Nuggets has to be the players fault. Karl almost never takes responsibility for anything, yet ironically, Karl is to blame for most of what is wrong with the Nuggets, who are now finally (it took until the cows came home but it’s finally happening) moving back down to the basement of the NBA where they apparently belong.
What bugs QFTR especially is how Karl criticizes players who have quit the Nuggets and moved onto other teams. The first of our two “who said whats” will be one of those….
KENYON MARTIN TRASHES GEORGE KARL FOR UNJUSTIFIABLY TRASHING CARMELO ANTHONY
Sports writer Sam Amick reported in Sports Illustrated that Kenyon Martin said the following about Carmelo Anthony playing now for the New York Knicks and about George Karl’s trashing of Anthony. Anthony was one of the very best players on the Denver Nuggets during the entire time George Karl has been the head coach of that team, until in early 2012 Anthony quit the Nuggets and moved on to play for the New York Knicks. As has been extensively reported here at QFTR (but hardly anywhere else) the main reason Carmelo Anthony demanded to get out of Denver is that he realized that the Nuggets could never possibly win the Quest for the Ring while using the strategies and tactics that they use to squeeze out as many regular season wins as possible.
For anyone who doesn’t know, Carmelo Anthony’s nickname is “Melo”.
KENYON MARTIN SAYS:
“First of all man, I wanted to call in to ESPN and say something when I saw them saying Anthony would mess it up. Melo wants to win. The man is a competitor, and he wants to win. He's as competitive as they come. Smart basketball player and the best player on that team -- hands down. So I don't understand why people are questioning whether he's selfish or not. No, the man is not selfish. The man wants to win. He'll do whatever it takes to win. I don't think he'll mess nothing up. He's going to come in and be Carmelo Anthony."
More from Kenyon Martin:
"Man, listen, George needs to keep his mouth shut, first and foremost. Melo don't play there no more. So Karl shouldn't be commenting on Melo. If George was such a great coach, then Melo would want to stay. He wouldn't want to leave.
If the organization was ran right, he wouldn't want to leave, so it ain't Melo. With Melo, not one time when he was there did he bring that in the locker room when all that stuff was going on. Not one day. Everybody made it a bigger deal than it had to be. That's a good kid.
They act like this kid was a cancer, like he came in there and destroyed the locker room and made everybody hate him. No, it wasn't nothing like that man. And it bothers me for people to be talking about how he's a selfish player and he has to defend himself."
They've got the team they wanted now. They got all us out of there. They didn't offer me an extension, they traded Anthony, J.R. Smith is gone (to the New York Knicks). They've got the team they want. So why doesn't Karl worry about coaching them and leaving Melo alone -- bottom line? It bothers me for them to keep harping at that."
See the full Sam Amick article at Sports Illustrated which is owned by CNN which is owned by multi-billionaire Ted Turner here.
QFTR agrees with Kenyon Martin 100% and for once will let someone else do almost all of the talking (and you thought that would never happen, laugh out loud).
Now for the other pleasant who said what….
TYSON CHANDLER AGREES WITH QFTR THAT THOSE WHO THINK THE NEW YORK KNICKS MADE A MISTAKE IN THE CARMELO ANTHONY TRADE ARE COMPLETELY WRONG
Tyson Chandler is the starting center for the New York Knicks, the team that Carmelo Anthony wanted to go to and did end up going to after he quit the Denver Nuggets.
In this report at SportsRadioInterviews Tyson Chandler states that those who think that the Denver Nuggets won the Carmelo Anthony trade over the New York Knicks (which would include George Karl judging from his public statements) are completely wrong. Michael Irvin of WQAM Sports Radio in Miami interviewed Tyson Chandler (the starting center for the New York Knicks) and then SportsRadioInterviews published a transcript from which QFTR excerpts here….
MICHAEL IRVIN INTERVIEWS TYSON CHANDLER
MICHAEL IRVIN: “What do you say to people who say you guys are better off without Carmelo Anthony?”
TYSON CHANDLER: “I think that is total madness. Any time you got a player that is top 10 player in the world, top 5 scorer in the world, you can’t tell me that you are not going to be better without him. It’s all about building team chemistry. We have to get every body to buy in to going after a championship. If everybody’s mind is going after a championship and that is everyone’s vision and everyone’s goal it doesn’t matter who is on the court at what time because we all should be playing for the same thing. We all should be playing unselfish and on defense we should all be getting after it. As long as we have that mindset there’s no reason why we can’t be successful and be contenders this year. I like our chances better with Melo because when he gets into the heart of things in the playoffs and in the clutch we need that go to guy. Melo is that guy. He’s been that guy his entire career.”
CHANDLER IS EXACTLY CORRECT AND TRUE
Tyson Chandler's statement here is loaded to the max with truth. It's a quote that will be remembered for years here at QFTR. We especially liked "total madness," "everybody's mind is going after a championship," and "everyone's vision," and "everyone's goal," and the whole damn sentence "I like our chances better with Melo because when he gets into the heart of things in the playoffs and in the clutch we need that go to guy".
If the audience for basketball writing was not so dumbed down and QFTR had traffic then Tyson Chandler could be a contributing writer for the Site!
QFTR will add in a few points to what Tyson Chandler said here regarding Carmelo Anthony.
THE SLUMPS OF CARMELO ANTHONY
Recently Carmelo Anthony has been in a shooting / scoring slump with the New York Knicks. Most recently he has been completely out of action with an injury, but prior to that his field goal percentage dropped under 40% (.400). That's sub par even for a small forward.
For those who don’t know, most if not all top scorers have fairly big slumps every year to one extent or another. Top scorers who more emphasize jump shooting (which is extremely immportant in the playoffs) have bigger slumps than those who more emphasize drives for layups / dunks / fouls.
Carmelo Anthony’s slumps have often been worse and a little longer than typical for for superstar scorers and for top jump shooters. Some of those slumps were to some extent due to some nagging injury. But sometimes Anthony has a nasty shooting slump that can go on as long as about 6 weeks and injury seems to have little or nothing to do with it. The shooting percentage drops from roughly .450 to as low as .360. So the slump is that of about every five shots he usually makes Melo is missing about one of those shots. These slumps have always ended after about six weeks maximum. Unfortunately a Melo slump can occur in the playoffs. Usually Melo will have one or two shooting slumps during a regular season lasting 3 to 6 weeks each.
But normally Melo is not slumping and normally he is that rare commodity: someone who can dependably score in high volume even in clutch, high pressure situations. He’s that rare bird who can take responsibility for scoring in the toughest of situations and back up that taking of responsibility with actual high volume scoring. Since everyone knows it’s tougher to score in the playoffs than in the regular season, Melo is exactly who you want in a playoff series. Lesser players are forced into slumps in playoff series against tough, ramped up defenses, but if Melo is in a slump at all, it will NOT be due to the other team but instead it will be due to some mysterious thing involving highly talented people in general and highly talented basketball players in particular.
The most talented people seem to have the need (or at least the characteristic) of going into periodic slumps. Highly talented people are highly talented most of the time but not all of the time.
Also, Melo is a small forward, one of the two positions (the other being shooting guard) which are on average the biggest problem areas for NBA teams. And those problem positions are even bigger problems in the playoffs than in the regular season. Many times a team loses a playoff series because every single one of their small forwards and shooting guards prove to be ineffective against a powerful, ramped up defense. But Melo, who is one of the best two or three or four small forwards in the NBA is (unless he is in a slump which is unlikely) NOT going to be mostly or completely shut down by even a ramped up, strong defense. Superstar scorers can not be mostly or completely shut down! Melo like anyone else can be slightly shut down by a determined defense but never to the point where all hope is lost for Melo's team to win the series.
CARMELO ANTHONY VERSUS DANILO GALLINARI
None of the players the Nuggets got in exchange for Carmelo Anthony are at Anthony’s level. Danilo Gallinari, who is also a small forward, comes closest. Compare Gallinari’s first four seasons to date with Anthony’s first four using the per 36 minutes format which is much smarter to use than the per game format.
Player MP FG FGA FG% 3P 3PA 3P% FT FTA FT% ORB DRB AST STL BLK TOV PF PTS Carmelo Anthony 11030 8.5 18.7 .455 0.6 2.2 .279 6.2 7.8 .798 1.9 3.7 2.9 1.1 0.4 3.0 2.9 23.8 Danilo Gallinari 6087 5.0 11.7 .425 2.1 5.7 .369 4.4 5.1 .854 0.9 4.3 1.9 1.0 0.6 1.5 2.5 16.5Or compare Gallinari and Anthony for all seasons each played (Gallinari is in his 4th season and Melo is in his 9th season:
Player MP FG FGA FG% 3P 3PA 3P% FT FTA FT% ORB DRB AST STL BLK TOV PF PTS Carmelo Anthony 22352 8.7 19.1 .456 0.8 2.5 .320 6.3 7.8 .806 1.9 4.4 3.1 1.1 0.5 3.0 3.0 24.5 Danilo Gallinari 6087 5.0 11.7 .425 2.1 5.7 .369 4.4 5.1 .854 0.9 4.3 1.9 1.0 0.6 1.5 2.5 16.5Gallinari exhibits the same relatively low shooting percentage that most small forwards have. Anthony’s shooting percentage is much higher than Gallinari's, both in the first four seasons and for the overall careers. So Melo gives a team an unusually strong small forward shooting percentage. Note also the volume of scoring; in both views above, Melo scores about half again more points per unit of time than does Gallinari. That is a huge difference. Melo wants and takes responsibility for very high volume scoring both in the regular season and in the playoffs whereas Gallinari does not because he can not.
But in the last few weeks Melo has been in a slump where his percentage has been a little below Gallinari’s. So naturally all of the kiddies posting at the Corporate Sites on the one hand and George Karl on the other hand take advantage of the temporary Melo slump in order to make dumb statements about how the Nuggets beat the Knicks in the Carmelo Anthony trade. (George Karl often does this indirectly, between the lines style, probably because he knows it's garbage)
For the reasons we have discussed and proved, in the medium and long runs, it is inevitable that the Knicks beat the Nuggets soundly in the Carmelo Anthony trade. It is extremely unlikely that Danilo Gallinari will ever be the weapon that Carmelo Anthony is in a NBA playoff series.
QFTR: THANK YOU KENYON MARTIN AND TYSON CHANDLER
Thank you Kenyon Martin and thank you Tyson Chandler for getting things straight about Carmelo Anthony and George Karl. With so much worshiping of George Karl out there and with a lot of trashing of superstar players by the kiddies going on all the time, it gets a little lonely out here in reality land sometimes. Best of luck to the your teams, the Los Angeles Clippers and the New York Knicks.
