Mid-Range Mondays: Carmelo Anthony

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With the three ball being so popular and analytics telling you the mid-range jumper is a bad shot, the mid-range game is nearly extinct so the Basketball Society will be bringing you “Mid-Range Mondays” where we highlight players who perfected operating in the mid-range area. 

Our first mid-range perfectionist is none other than Carmelo Anthony. He’s one of few who still loves getting his buckets from the mid-post/elbow extended area. Unfortunately, Anthony catches a lot of flack because presumably he hasn’t won and many think you can’t win with him but if you watch him play, he’s still an elite player. Carmelo is one of the rare dinosaurs in today’s world who majority of his shots are mid-range jumpers.

Carmelo Anthony
A pie chart of Carmelo Anthony’s shot selection during the 2015-2016 via NBAsavant.com

Anthony is damn near impossible to stop at that elbow and some of his peers, such as Kobe Bryant will tell you first hand, he’s one of the toughest guys to guard in the league. Melo loves to lure guys to sleep with his pump fake/jab-step action. And depending on how they react will determine what he does. Often Melo goes to the jumper but if his defender is too tight, he will blow right past him and finish at the rim. The only downfall to Anthony’s mid-range game is that at times, it can act as a ball stopper but he’s seem to be better in that aspect as his assist numbers increased last season. He’s becoming a better playmaker from the elbow area and once he perfects it, the rest of the league will have a lot to worry about.

Check out a montage of Carmelo Anthony’s mid-range isolations: 

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