Incomplete Doesn’t Mean You’re Not Elite

Some things don’t necessarily have to add up for reality to make sense.

Take the Step Up movie franchise for instance.

I bet when you read that sentence you went to IMDB and searched for “Step Up” just to make sure there wasn’t an entirely different movie than the first one that popped into your head. And the first one that popped into your head was the dance movie starring the inexplicable Channing Tatum. Amazingly, THAT’S the movie franchise I’m talking about.

The third installment of this epic dance club trilogy opens up today in movie theaters nation wide and it was filmed entirely in 3D. That’s right. They made a dance movie in 3D. What’s even more incredible than the fact that this 3D dance movie was passed through every single step of the movie making process is the success of the movie franchise.

According to IMDB, the first and second Step Up movies were budgeted for a combined $35 million (estimated) and together they grossed over $120 million in the US alone. While I’m sure the movies themselves are plenty entertaining and they have die hard fans who would be quick to take you to task for not giving these beacons of entertainment a chance, it doesn’t make it any less surprising that the franchise without any big names (the three Channing Tatum fans are going to be furious with me) could be set to drop a third in-theater release.

And that’s where you sort of have to take a leap of faith with the movies. Even though it doesn’t make much quantifiable sense, maybe they’re just that good. Sometimes you can’t explain phenomena such as this and that’s where I’ll disagree with a brilliant basketball mind by saying Carmelo Anthony is one of the NBA’s elite.

Fellow HP brother and basketball genius Tom Haberstroh wrote a very good breakdown (ESPN Insider) of Carmelo Anthony, explaining why he shouldn’t be amongst the elite in the game. Tom makes a very compelling argument with statistical evidence that is nearly impossible to refute. But this is the time in which traditional basketball thinking and the world of advanced stats slam into each other like a couple of evenly matched sumo wrestlers.

“In the end, Anthony’s game demonstrates why it’s important to strip away the biases that color our perceptions of elite players. In Anthony’s case, the excessive shot volume, his team’s stat-padding tempo and the lack of a true 3-point game makes his 28.2 ppg seem far less impressive than his sparkling reputation would suggest.

If anything, it’s time we moved on from per-game statistics to evaluate our players. Millions of dollars are wasted every year basing player value on the archaic statistics that teams used half a century ago. And someone will surely overpay Anthony and offer him a max contract — just look at the deals Joe Johnson and Rudy Gay got.”

After explaining many reasons of why Carmelo Anthony falls short due to his seemingly one-dimensional game and why his offense might be more smoke and mirrors than fire and whatever the opposite or more tangible version of mirrors is, Tom throws down the advanced versus basic stats gauntlet. People who claim that Tom is just a “stat geek that needs to actually watch the games” clearly don’t understand what he’s saying or the reason he’s saying it. The evidence is correct.

But can it also be false? Outside of scoring, Carmelo doesn’t do anything at an elite level. He’s a marginal rebounder at best, a suspect defender and a guy that doesn’t create for his teammates nearly as much as he probably could and should. He throws out good but not outstanding PER numbers every season. His shooting numbers are good but not special. And yet at the same time, I can’t help but think he is a legitimate elite player in the NBA.

If you ask me (and I’m assuming you are in an indirect way if you read through nearly 300 words about Step Up before you got to the point of this post), the way Carmelo Anthony scores is what makes him elite. I don’t disagree with Tom’s points about the pace and shooting numbers making his gaudy points per game numbers look better than they actually are. But with the way he performs in the fourth quarter it’s hard for me to ignore just how good he is.

Over the past three seasons, Carmelo Anthony has been one of the better clutch scorers in the NBA. Yes, his shooting numbers have been up and down in terms of the percentage he’s made in these situations but he still puts up more points than just about anybody when it counts (thanks, 82games.com):

- In the 2007-08 season, Carmelo Anthony ranked just 20^th (36.3) in the NBA in points per 48 clutch minutes while shooting 42% from the field, 12.5% from three and 81% from the free throw line. But he got to the free throw line in these situations better than all but 14 players in the NBA at 17.6 free throw attempts per 48 clutch minutes.

- In the 2008-09 season, Carmelo Anthony was sort of unstoppable when it counted the most. Only Kobe Bryant and LeBron James scored a higher volume of clutch points with Carmelo finishing third in the league with 54.4 points per 48 clutch minutes. He shot absurd percentages of 56.5% from the field, 58.3% from three and 82% from the free throw line. He also got to the free throw line more than anybody with 24 attempts per 48 clutch minutes.

- This past season, Carmelo fell back down to Earth in terms of clutch shooting percentages. He made just 42.7% from the field, 14.3% from three and improved his free throw shooting to 87%. But he still finished fourth in the league in clutch points per 48 with 47.0 and second in clutch free throw attempts per 48 with 21.7 per.

While the percentages fluctuate quite a bit from year to year and the 08-09 efficiency from three-point range seems to be a complete anomaly, the fact that he scores when his team needs it the most can’t be overlooked just because he’s “not elite” during other parts of the game. Carmelo is an elite crunch time scorer and he’s been the best player on one of the best teams in the league over the past three years. He’s put his Nuggets in the conversation for one of the challengers to the mighty Lakers in each of the past three seasons in an impossibly tough Western Conference.

What’s funny to me is that nobody would question Kevin Durant being an elite player in the NBA right now. And when you look at the numbers of what he did compared to what Carmelo Anthony did, there isn’t a HUGE difference in the final output.

(Click chart to enlarge)

(Click chart to enlarge)

Aside from a PER, offensive rating and win shares, the numbers are pretty even all across the board. Durant’s TS% is also much higher than Carmelo’s but considering Durant just put together a historic season at the free throw line, I don’t think you can really use that against Anthony all that much. Win shares and offensive rating are fairly damning but I still don’t believe that it disproves Carmelo being an elite player in this league.

Look to the fourth quarter of the last three seasons and you’ll see that Anthony has been far superior to Durant in clutch scoring. Yes, Durant is still so young and doing all of this at the equivalent of being a NBA toddler but it doesn’t change the fact that Carmelo bests him in a very important area despite taking a backseat to the current popular opinion of who is better between the two.

And for the first time in a long time, the primitive argument of “watch the games” may hold a ladle of water for this discussion. There’s no doubt when you watch a close Nuggets game in the fourth quarter that Carmelo Anthony is an elite player. He cuts through defenses by hitting face-up jumpers, pull-up jumpers and even gets into the paint to create some contact before creating some scoring. He’s not perfect by any means in these situations but he’s still one of the best there is in the NBA.

Maybe Carmelo Anthony isn’t in the elite class of LeBron, Kobe, Wade and Durant. Okay, he’s definitely not in their class. But he can still be an elite player in this league in the same way that Chris Paul, Dwight Howard and Deron Williams are for their respective teams. They impact games in ways that other players in the NBA simply can’t consistently do.

Step Up is an important part of the current movie industry in the same way Carmelo Anthony is an elite player in this league. Just because you look at the entire body of work and come away unimpressed doesn’t mean that the box office numbers are irrelevant.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to defend myself to Channing Tatum’s family fans.

Oster-Tags: Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Durant, probablyinovermyheadbydisagreeingwithsomeonewhoissomuchsmarterthanme