De'Anthony Melton Is The Kind Of Player The Sixers Have Always Needed
De'Anthony Melton is starting to fit perfectly for the Sixers.
Adam Aaronson, whose legal name is Sixers Adam (@SixersAdam on Twitter), covers the Sixers for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez. He believes cantaloupe is the best food in existence, and is brought to you by the Official Realtor of The Process, Adam Ksebe.
Every year, we all come up with hundreds of transactional ideas for the Sixers -- who doesn’t love using the trade machine? Much to our dismay, these suggestions are almost never actually acted upon.
But as last summer’s NBA Draft neared, it seemed obvious that the Sixers would use their first-round pick and Danny Green’s expiring contract to acquire an impactful rotation piece.
I wrote about some of the options they had entering that night. My first idea of a trade involving Green and the draft pick was sending him to the Memphis Grizzlies and acquiring guard De’Anthony Melton in return.
Believe it or not, the Sixers did trade Green and the pick for Melton, a long-time analytics darling who came into the NBA as a tantalizing defensive prospect but continued to show progress on the offensive end.
I bring all of that up to say this: Melton is a player championship contenders and their fans have been fascinated by for a very long time -- and when he finally became available, Sixers President of Basketball Operations Daryl Morey pounced on the player he once drafted in the second round when he was running the Houston Rockets.
Melton’s first few games as a Sixer were nothing to write home about. But during the four-game road trip that the team just completed, he clearly found his footing and began leaving a significant mark on games.
During the road trip, Melton played 26.7 minutes per game, shot 41.2 percent from beyond the arc on more than four attempts per game, chipped in some assists and rebounds, and, of course, made several standout plays as a defender.
Melton has gotten at least one steal in every game this season, including racking up eight of them during the two games against the Toronto Raptors alone.
“He’s such a disruptor defensively,” Sixers head coach Doc Rivers said of Melton after Monday night’s win against the Washington Wizards. “I knew he was good. I didn’t know he was this good defensively.”
When I wrote about a handful of predictions for the season a few weeks ago, the one I felt most confident in is that Melton would form an effective and enjoyable stable alongside James Harden and Tyrese Maxey. Three-guard lineups can be massively successful in today’s NBA when you have the right guys in place.
Here we are now, and the Sixers have three versatile guards on their roster who have the potential to be a deadly trio. Because of Harden’s impressive lower body strength and Melton’s terrific length, a Sixers three-guard lineup can match up defensively with most units across the NBA. That box can be checked easily. The next one is: can they succeed offensively?
So far, the answer seems to be yes. Albeit in a small sample size, Sixers lineups featuring Harden, Maxey and Melton have a phenomenal Offensive Rating -- points scored per 100 possessions -- of 129.1, according to Cleaning the Glass.
Countless times last season, Harden and/or Maxey would face aggressive traps and double-teams from opposing defenses. Their safety valve was often Matisse Thybulle, despite Thybulle being a mostly-inept offensive player. The Sixers likely envisioned having someone who could play a part similar to that of Bruce Brown on last year’s Brooklyn Nets team -- a selfless connector who keeps things rolling. No offense to Thybulle, but he is simply not capable of manning that kind of role.
Melton, though, has already shown that he might have the skills and the chops to fulfill those obligations. On several occasions recently, especially in games Joel Embiid has missed, defenses have attempted to take Harden and/or Maxey out of the equation, often forcing Melton to make a key decision with the ball in his hands.
So far, so good. Melton averaged four assists per game on the road trip -- his career-high for assists per game in a season came in his rookie year when he averaged 3.2 assists while playing just 19.7 minutes per game, good for a very respectable 7.7 assists per 100 possessions.
It’s clear by now that Rivers envisions Melton having a significant role all season. Melton has started in both games that Embiid has missed, with PJ Tucker serving as the starting center. Against two teams in Toronto and Washington that do not have a bruising traditional big, the move paid off.
The versatility and optionality Melton has given the Sixers on both ends of the floor is clear, and it’s one of the biggest reasons that this team is starting to get back on track after a horrid 1-4 start to the season.