Portland Trail Blazers: 5 important decisions to make in the off-season

Decision five – whether to bring back Carmelo Anthony

This is a tough decision. One of the greatest scorers to ever grace an NBA floor, Carmelo Anthony is a bonafide first-ballot Hall-of-Famer.

He had a good year for the Blazers and was better in the NBA Bubble from a scoring standpoint, shooting 45.1 percent from three in the playoffs. He hit some of the biggest shots in his career in the seeding games, with some huge threes in the clutch getting the Blazers across the line in certain games.

Melo can still play in this league. After almost a year away from the game, he showed he could foot it with the best. But on a team that’s trying to contend, he takes away far too much on the defensive end.

He can’t guard any of the faster threats at the four, let alone the three. He probably played better on that end of the floor than expected, but the Blazers need to have a higher standard on defense if they want to contend. Being 27th in the league on defense isn’t good enough.

I have no problem with them bringing Melo back, but if they do, it needs to be to play at the four only. And, his minutes need to be limited to around 20 a night. Melo’s struggles around the rim mean that he is exclusively a shooter these days. Yes you have to guard him, and he can still get to his spots in the midrange, but his finishing at the rim has declined markedly.

The other condition around bringing him back should be financial. It would be very poor cap management if we used any of our cap space on him. Melo needs to come back on a deal that’s around the veteran minimum. Yes he can still add value as a shooter on this team, but we need defense, so committing some of our precious cap space to him would be a bad idea.

The Blazers have time to make these decisions as the draft and free agency won’t be for a few months, but they need to get these calls right to contend in the Western Conference again next season.