As of right now, Carmelo Anthony is on the outside-looking-in of the NBA. The multiple-time All-Star and the one-time scoring champion has yet to receive a call from a team. Melo is a player who is quite controversial for many NBA fans. You either love him or hate him. There seems to be no in-between.
Some hate him for his style of play relying on being ball-dominant and shooting mid-range jump-shots. Others love him simply because the name of the game is to put the ball in the hoop and that is what his specialty is – he scores. However, we will be discussing Melo in a different light today. We will be looking at the most underrated and overlooked season of his career. Be ready, because the answer is going to surprise you.
Carmelo Anthony’s Most Underappreciated Season of his Career
Carmelo Anthony’s 2012-13 Campaign
Yes, you read that right. The year Melo won the scoring title is actually the most overlooked season of his long career. Think about it. When it comes to great scoring seasons, Melo’s 2012-13 season rarely gets mentioned. Sure, when talking about Melo’s career, we may bring up the 2009 season when he helped the Nuggets get all the way to the Western Conference Finals. However, he was being aided by Chauncey Billups who was the starting point guard of that squad. Melo did not really have a player of Billups’ caliber to pair with on the New York Knicks, even though J.R. Smith did win the Sixth Man of the Year that season.
We may even bring up his rookie season where he brought the Denver Nuggets back to relevance and willed them to the postseason. There is also a strong case to be made that he should have been Rookie of the Year that season over LeBron James.
It is also easy to forget that Melo received an MVP vote in the 2012-13 season as well. This prevented LeBron from becoming the first-ever unanimous MVP in NBA history. However, what exactly do the numbers tell about Anthony’s season where he won his lone scoring title? Without further adieu, let’s take a look.
Carmelo Anthony: His Stats From the 2012-13 Season
Carmelo Anthony put up insane numbers during his scoring campaign. During the 2012-13 season, he averaged 28.7 points per game on 44.9 percent shooting from the field. He even shot 37.9 percent from three-point territory. That’s one of the higher averages Anthony put up from this range for his entire career. Carmelo Anthony even had a solid season on the glass. He averaged 6.9 total rebounds per game that particular season and came away with a total rebounding percentage of 10.8 percent.
When Melo won the scoring title, he averaged an offensive rating of 112 coupled with a career-high usage rate of 35.6 percent. That same year, he would come away with a combined win share total of 9.5, the second-highest total in this category of his career.
With all of this in mind, it should make sense as to why this season is the most overlooked and solid season of Carmelo Anthony’s career. To this day, it is shocking that more people do not bring this particular campaign up when it comes to Carmelo Anthony.
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