As someone who typically errs on the side of Stephen Jackson's opinion out of fear that he'll find out I didn't only to show up on my doorstep ready to put out a lit blunt on my eyeball, I must say that he really lost me with this one. I've been riding the "Carmelo Anthony can't possibly be as toxic to a team as he's repeatedly appeared to be" wave for quite some time. Unfortunately, that tsunami of ignorance came crashing down hard when a Rockets' team that's gotten off to a miserable start decided to cut bait with a free agent acquisition that somehow defied the bounds of inefficiency in a mere 10 games as a member of the organization...
I've kept an open ear this long, so I might as well listen to any and all new and creative excuses for Carmelo Anthony, but not even Stephen Jackson can get away with throwing out an aggressive term like "blackballed" without having any basis whatsoever for that claim. The only possible reason I could I conjure up for the NBA colluding to get rid of Melo is that multiple teams have been brought to the brink of bankruptcy by his buyouts, but GM's aren't combining their executive powers to help other GM's avoid franchise crippling financial mistakes. The truth is, one of the best ball-stopping scorers in NBA history (and an eventual HOFer) hasn't become nothing more than a check-cashing journeyman because he's not better at basketball than the last few men on every bench in the Association. Stephen Jackson is absolutely right in saying there are easily 100 players in the league that are less talented than Carmelo Anthony...and just about every last one of them is more well-rounded, more versatile, less stubborn, and less high-maintenance than someone who still puts up a stink about being a starter instead of just worrying about winning. We're talking about a guy who is almost literally getting paid six different ways to Sunday. If Stephen Jackson was trying to say that he's being used as a scapegoat for the Rockets issues then I'd partially agree, though he's basically been begging to be treated as such by being extremely "ba-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah" at basketball lately. However, if the NBA wanted to blackball Carmelo Anthony for reasons entirely unknown they would have done so like 200 million dollars ago, so can't we all just finally accept that, good teammate or not, he's a bad team player at this stage in his career?
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