Milwaukee Bucks

Jared Dudley says Carmelo Anthony is most overrated player in the NBA

Published May. 28, 2015 11:59 a.m. ET

foxsports

Jared Dudley is one of the smartest players in the NBA, and he showed off some of his sparkling opinions Wednesday.

Appearing on an episode of The Herd, Dudley first stated that players don't want to team up with Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles. He then added that Carmelo Anthony is the most overrated player in the NBA. Here's what he had to say about Melo:

The reason why I say Carmelo is because Carmelo is viewed as a top-five player. He’s viewed in the NBA as a top-five.

Carmelo, he has the talent to be able to be able to facilitate – the triangle should fit him where he’s got to make guys better, and defensively, he’s got to take the next level up. But Carmelo, he’s got to get out. He’s got to get out of the first/second round. He’s got to get teams to the playoffs.

LeBron, with that roster, LeBron would have gotten them to the playoffs. They would have been at least the eight seed.

It'd odd that Dudley would speak about Kobe in one sentence and then fail to mention him in the overrated players discussion. Maybe he's just not the guy you call out for a lack of basketball talent. He certainly does seem somewhere between 500 and a million times scarier than the sweet-spirited Anthony.

This just seems to come at a bit of an odd time. Does anyone really consider Anthony a top-five player anymore? If anything, Melo may have become underrated over the past few years, garnering loads of "You can't win with him" labels as the Knicks continue to get worse and worse by the month. New York went 17-65 this year, though Anthony missed half the season with a knee injury. Even when he was playing, he wasn't 100 percent. That's part of why the LeBron Would've Taken That Team to the Playoffs Argument is so flawed (along with, you know, how insanely unfair it is to compare anyone to LeBron James).

Ask any casual fan to name the best players in the NBA and you'll probably get a mix of James, Kevin Durant, Chris Paul, Anthony Davis, Stephen Curry, Russell Westbrook and James Harden before you ever hear Anthony's name. It's totally plausible people thinker higher of John Wall, Marc Gasol, Damian Lillard, LaMarcus Aldridge, Kawhi Leonard and Kevin Love, too.

The criticisms of Melo are legitimate. He's neither a defender nor a distributor. We've heard those ones for years (though he did actually make a conference finals with Denver). But that doesn't make him the most overrated player in the NBA. There are others (like one particular guy wearing purple and gold in L.A.) who fit that description better.

You can view Dudley's entire segment on The Herd here: