ROCKETS SIGN ANTHONY; CAN THEY MAKE IT WORK?
10-time All-Star, accustomed to being a No. 1 option, will support other stars.
Mike D’Antoni understands the doubts, the questions the Rockets’ addition of 10-time All-Star Carmelo Anthony on Monday raised with many. He had questions, too. But to the Rockets’ coach, they have been answered.
Anthony was a free agent when he made his decision to join the Rockets official, signing his one- year, $2.4 million contract Monday. He chose to accept the kind of role he could find with the Rockets, largely playing as a power forward, possibly coming off the bench, certainly in support of other stars rather as the No. 1 option as he had been through most of his career.
His willingness to not just accept, but to choose his place in the Rockets’ mix was all D’Antoni needed to hear.
“I understand some of the naysayers,” D’Antoni said. “I understand the question marks going into it. I would be worried about it if there were no conversations. But those have been answered sufficiently. Now, we’ll have to adjust. I’ll have to adjust a few things to get the best out of Melo and he’ll have to adjust his game to play with us the best he
can. That’s normal things it took Chris (Paul) and James (Harden) about an hour and half to get solved.
“I go back to the Olympic experience and they want to play for the team, the name on the front of the jersey instead of the name on the back. That makes it easy, when you have talented players. You can’t make something out of nothing. We can make something out of something. These guys got something.”
Anthony is the most successful Olympic player ever, the United States’ alltime leading scorer and rebounder and a three-time gold medalist, including one season when D’Antoni was an assistant coach since they were unable to make their partnership with the Knicks work.
D’Antoni stepped down in New York because he was unable to get Anthony to buy into his style, including playing Anthony at power forward and taking him out of the low post where he had been a prolific one-onone scorer. By signing with the Rockets, Anthony had chosen to play in that style, though without the burdens of carrying a team that he had in New York after the blockbuster trade that brought him in from Denver.
“We never had a blowup,” D’Antoni said. “We never had hard feelings. Melo’s a good guy. He just didn’t want to play my vision. He came from Denver in the middle of the year. You put New York pressure on him and we gave up half our team to get him. We didn’t have enough resources to win immediately. With the pressure, me wanting to play a different way than he was accustomed to and had been successful at, we just clashed. We couldn’t get over the hump. The best thing I could do is resign at that point because you can’t have it both ways. It wouldn’t work the other way.
“Since then, we (were in) the Olympics together. Let’s try to make this work. He’s an enormous talent and I think we can make this work.”
D’Antoni said he is convinced it will work because of Anthony’s varied offensive talents and determination to fit in with the Rockets’ rotation and style. Anthony made 37.3 percent of his catch-and-shoot 3s last season and 41.8 percent of his catch-and-shoot attempts from the 3-point line in his final season with the Knicks.
The Rockets create more spot-up 3s than any team in NBA history, but they also seemed to need another scorer that can create shots for himself and around him in the Western Conference Finals against the Warriors, averaging eight points per 100 possessions fewer in the series even before Paul’s injury than they had in the regular season.
“He’s a good shooter,” D’Antoni said. “He can spot-up from 3, like Chris did with James. He can do that with those two, easily. He’ll play a lot of four. He’ll play some three. We have defensive guys like Eric Gordon. He’s not going anywhere. He has a certain skill set that at times will be very valuable. When we don’t need that skill set, he can catch and shoot and play hard, like a else.”
‘We never had a blowup. We never had hard feelings. Melo’s a good guy. He just didn’t want to play my vision. ’ Mike D’Antoni Rockets coach, on coaching Anthony when both were with the New York Knicks