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I stumbled upon a January 15, 2011 analytically-inclined defense of Carmelo Anthony by Nate Silver (I also think the 2012-13 Knicks prove it was at least possible to construct a championship-caliber team around Mr. Anthony), written at the hight of the Anthony-to-Knicks trade rumors that would culminate with the Nuggets trading Mr. Anthony to the Knicks justover one month after Mr. Silver published his essay. While I agree with most of the points Mr. Silver raised in Mr. Anthony’s favor, his reasoning behind one point lacked context.

[F]or instance, Allen Iverson’s True Shooting Percentage was 55.9 percent – much better than the 51.2 TS% that Iverson, a notoriously inefficient shooter, posted outside of Denver over the course of his career.

Nate Silver

The Philadelphia 76ers traded Allen Iverson to the Denver Nuggets in the middle of the 2006-07 season, where he and Carmelo Anthony formed a high-scoring duo. The Nuggets would trade Mr. Iverson to the Detroit Pistons very early in the 2008-09 season. Both Messrs. Anthony and Iverson put up good individual numbers together, although their partnership resulted in two swift first round playoff exists, while the Nuggets reached the Western Conference Finals in 2008-09 with Chauncey Billups in place of Mr. Iverson. With that being said, fear Mr. Silver left out some important context in his assertion. I will focus on the 2007-08 season, which is the only complete season Messrs. Anthony and Iverson were teammates.

  • Mr. Iverson had a career-best true shooting percentage of .567 in 2007-08, which does support Mr. Silver’s position. However, it is worth noting that Mr. Anthony also had his career-best true shooting percentage in 2007-08, coming in at .568. In both cases, one reason they helped make each other more efficient was because their usage rates ticked down. Mr. Iverson used 26.7% of Denver’s possessions while he was on the floor in 2007-08, the lowest number of his career to that point. From 1998-99 through 2005-06, Mr. Iverson never had a usage rate lower than the 32.6% he posted in 1998-99. Mr. Anthony had a usage rate of 30.2% in 2007-08, down from 33.4% in 2006-07 and 32.0% in 2005-06.  It was his lowest since 29.2% in 2004-05. (It is worth noting however that Mr. Anthony almost matched his 2007-08 TS% in 2005-06, coming in at .563 at 32.0% usage).
  • Mr. Iverson’s true shooting percentages generally improved at extreme usage beginning in 2004-05, which coincidentally was the season where the NBA started cracking down on making contact with players on the perimeter. After having a then-career high TS% of .535 in his sophomore season in 1998-99 (his last season below 30% usage until 2006-07), Mr. Iverson’s best season from 1999-00 through 2003-04 was .518 in his MVP 2000-01 campaign. In 2004-05, Mr. Iverson posted .532 and followed that up with a then-career high .543 in 2005-06. His usage rates in those seasons were 35.0% and 35.8% respectively. While I do not have a formula to show you, I will note that Mr. Iverson’s true shooting percentages in 2004-05 and 2005-06 were probably more impressive than his better number in 2007-08 when we factor in his usage rate.
  • Similarly, Mr. Anthony went on to have at least one season that was clearly better than 2007-08. In 2012-13, he posted a slightly lower .561 true shooting percentage on NBA-leading 35.6% usage.

For more Carmelo Anthony-Chauncey Billups reading, see my NLJ essay Should the Pistons have drafted Carmelo?