London 2012: Why Carmelo Anthony Is Scoring so Much for Team USA

Carmelo Anthony has a certain reputation in the NBA. He has been called a ball-stopper and been criticized for not being very good defensively. His status as an absolute elite player is questioned, due to his lack of recent success with the New York Knicks. .

But Carmelo Anthony has been nothing short of absolutely sensational with Team USA. We knew coming in that he would play a key role. He has always been a good international player. He's posting 17.4 points per game. It's not a surprise that a man who has averaged nearly 25 points per game in his career is scoring similarly well for his country.

The most impressive stat? Anthony has canned an absolutely ridiculous 60% of his threes while ranking sixth in attempts and second in makes. 

As prolific and natural at putting the biscuit in the basket, he ranked sixth in the NBA in scoring. His FIBA success would make sense, until you consider the fact that the five guys ahead of him are all on Team USA as well.

Yup. Kevin Durant, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Russell Westbrook, and Kevin Love were all ahead of him. Yet, all of them other than Durant are getting outscored in the Olympics by Carlos Delfino and Linas Kleiza. Again, this makes sense. Those guys have more license to shoot because of the more shallow talent pool on their teams. On a team with seven of the ten leading scorers in the 2011-2012 NBA season, one basketball obviously wouldn't be enough.

It begs the question, "How come Carmelo Anthony is doing the scoring, then?". It's surprising to say the least; four years ago in Beijing on a similarly loaded Redeem Team, Anthony averaged just 11.5 points per game. 

Before we answer that question, let's take a look at Anthony's shot chart, compiled by CourtVision Analytics. 

A few things stick out like LeBron's hairline without a headband. First, Carmelo hates going to his left unless he's posting up there. Second, he loves that elbow jumper. Third, he's crazy good from midrange and shoots accordingly; roughly 30.8% of his shots come from between 15 feet to just inside the arc, while he makes about 40% of them. Combine that with his 52.9% on short jumpers, layups and other sub-ten foot shots (38.5% of his shots) and his ability to get to the line, and you have one of the best scorers in the league. 

Now, lets take a look at a couple key differences between the FIBA game and the NBA game. First, the three-point arc is much shorter, and more importantly, it is oval-shaped, as opposed to "D"-shaped like it is in the NBA. Second, there's a shorter foul limit of five personals. Third, collapsing zones with wider lanes render back-to-basket guys who can't pass irrelevant (see Howard, Dwight). Fourth, refs don't call that tick-tack hand-check nonsense that NBA refs do, hence why Russell Westbrook is somewhat less of a weapon internationally than he is in the NBA.  

This would begin to explain how 'Melo made 10 for 12 from deep against Nigeria. All of those rules combine to form a slightly different game; they benefit guards who can play the slash-and-kick game, and by extension, forwards who can shoot the midrange jumper well. Of course, the latter is one of Melo's specialties as outlined in the shot chart. Don't believe me? Eight of those three's were assisted by one of USA's three point guards. 

It doesn't end there, though. Again, the shape of the arc comes into play. Because the end of the arc near the sidelines is closer to out of bounds than in the NBA, it's a bit of a less higher percentage shot than an elbow kickout. Where's the radius of the arc the shortest? You guessed, it the elbow.

Oh right. The same right elbow where Carmelo is good for 42.5%, and where he shoots over a fifth of his shots in the NBA.

Combine that with the fact that Carmelo loves physical play under the rim and his underrated passing—a premium skill at the international level—and his game is tailor-made for the Olympics.