We are going back in time to the 2003-2004 ROTY race between Carmelo Anthony and LeBron James. The outcome of the ROTY was LeBron James winning the award but stats don’t show he should have won, their teams records after they got drafted showed LeBron shouldn’t have won. So today I’m going to be backing up Melo’s case for why he was robbed of ROTY. LeBron and Carmelo were both top prospects going into the 2003 NBA Draft and expected to change their respective franchises around. LeBron went 1st overall like expected, and Carmelo was picked 3rd by the Nuggets when in reality he should have been picked by the Pistons and then Melo would have a couple of rings already because in the same season as Melo’s rookie year, the Pistons won it all and their 2nd overall pick Darko Milicic did absolutely nothing for them. But that’s a different story for another time.
Argument for Melo: The argument here is very simple to understand because let’s look at both of their rookie stats, Melo leads in PPG, FG%, 3P%, RPG, FT%, +/-. Not by any means is LeBron behind Melo by a lot in these categories but stats do prove who’s better even if it comes down to 0.1 PPG. Now this is why I think Carmelo Anthony was robbed, let’s look at their respective teams records before they drafted them to the season after. The Cavs were 17-65 in the 2002-2003 season and after they drafted LeBron they went up to 35-47 and didn’t make the playoffs, while the Nuggets before Melo were 17-65 and the season of Melo being drafted they went 43-39 and made the playoffs. Wow, aren’t stats amazing to show something was completely wrong in the pass. Melo had better stats than LeBron, and Melo made the Nuggets way better in his rookie season. Hopefully you can see from Melo’s case why he should have won the ROTY.
LeBron’s Case: There are always 2 sides to a story and now we’ll give you LeBron’s case for the ROTY. I’ll give him the point that he had a weaker team compared to Melo’s Nuggets. LeBron was the Basketball God’s chosen one to be the superstar he was in his rookie season. LeBron showed unmatched leadership as a 19 year old, he was pushing older veterans on the team to do better. LeBron came in and changed the culture for the team and the city of Cleveland. LeBron led in categories, APG, BPG, and SPG against Melo. People say he won because of the fact that the NBA couldn’t give the ROTY to someone who wasn’t named LeBron James. Which would be the better story, the 19 year old phenom changed the culture and direction of his childhood team, or some guy on the Nuggets with a bland story behind him won the ROTY. Hopefully you got an opinion on this now and can come up with yours now after reading this.
TheDyspatch 