Carmelo Anthony scored 37 points in the New York Knicks season opening win, 106-104, over the Boston Celtics. The Knicks needed every one of those points to beat the Celtics, and will, I believe, need Carmelo to score like that all season.

Carmelo Anthony
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Carmelo Anthony is Great NBA Scorer

So far in his NBA career, Carmelo Anthony is averaging 24.9 points per game. That is the 13th highest scoring average in NBA history. Twice in his career Melo averaged over 28.0 points per game for a season. In 2007 he averaged 28.9 points per game, and in 2010 he averaged 28.2 points per game.

There’s no doubt that Carmelo Anthony is a great scorer in the NBA. On December 10, 2008, playing for the Denver Nuggets, Carmelo Anthony poured in 33 points in the third quarter of a game vs the Minnesota Tmiberwolves. That is tied with George Gervin for the most points a player has ever scored in an NBA quarter.

I’ve been a Carmelo Anthony fan since he took my favorite college basketball team, the Syracuse Orange, to the NCAA Championship in 2003. I’ve followed Melo’s career since then, and have always believed he would win a scoring title in the NBA.

When Melo averaged 28.9 points per game in 2007, he finished second to Kobe Bryant in scoring, but was not really that close to Kobe’s 31.56 points per game average. Melo has also finished third in scoring a couple of times, including last season when he averaged 25.58 points per game. This season though, I think Carmelo Anthony will win his first NBA scoring title. Here’s why I think so.

Carmelo Anthony Had Teammates Who Could Score with the Denver Nuggets

During the two seasons Carmelo Anthony averaged over 28.0 points per game in Denver, the Nuggets had plenty of offense around him. The 2007 team had Allen Iverson (24.8 points per game average in 2007), who won four NBA scoring titles, on the team, as well as Earl Boykins (15.2), Andre Miller (13.0), J.R. Smith (13.0), Nene (12.2), and Marcus Camby (11.2).

The 2010 Denver Nuggets had Chauncey Billups (19.5), J.R. Smith (15.4), Nene (13.8) and Kenyon Martin (11.5) on the team scoring points. So in both the seasons that Carmelo Anthony had his highest scoring averages so far in the NBA, he had plenty of other players who scored points on the team.

New York Knicks Only Have Amare Stoudemire and Will Need Carmelo Anthony to Score a Lot of Points

The 2011-12 New York Knicks really only have one other legitimate established NBA scorer on the team in Amare Stoudemire. Newly signed center Tyson Chandler has only averaged 8.3 points per game in his NBA career. Looking over the rest of the Knicks roster, there’s really no one else on the team had can be relied upon to score points.

Toney Douglas has a career average of 9.8 points per game, while Landry Fields has averaged 9.7. Mike Bibby has a career scoring average of 15.2 points per game, but he’s averaged just 9.1 and 8.6 points per game over his last two NBA seasons. Baron Davis has scored 16.5 points per game in his career, but he’s not expected to play for the Knicks for at least a month, and Davis only averaged 13.1 points per game in 2011.

The Knicks just do not have many players who they can rely upon to score points in the 2011-12 season. The team is really going to have to lean heavily on Carmelo Anthony to score points this season, just like in the first game victory over the Boston Celtics.

That’s why I believe Carmelo Anthony is very likely to go on and win the NBA scoring title in 2011-12.

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John Minchillo | Posted: Saturday, October 1, 2011 11:38 am

Of course former New York Knick GM Donnie Walsh thinks the team he just left could be a “championship-contender.” Technically, he brought the players in; though there is still some sort of consternation as to whether or not he would have given up as much as James Dolan gave up in the trade for Carmelo Anthony(notes).

And, technically, he’s still a Knick employee; paid as a team consultant.

And, technically? He didn’t actually say “championship-contender.”

From an interview with Marc Berman at the New York Post (via Pro Basketball Talk):

“We have a core of players we can build around to build a [championship-contending] team,” Walsh said. “We’re not finished. There’s more pieces. But I think we got some really good players that can lead a team and form a core of that team. What we have are the most important things.”

What did he say within the brackets, there? The ones that hit the Post as “[championship-contending]“? I’m having a little fun here, Berman’s not going to fudge a quote, but it does leave Donnie a nice out for whenever the Knicks stop paying him.

And, technically again, he’s not wrong. All cores can be looked at as championship-contending if you toss in enough caveats. And Donnie tossed in quite a few. The difference is just how close to “championship-contending” your core is by itself, or if it’s merely a “[championship-contender].”

The Knicks, I’m sure you’d agree, have the former in the form of Amar’e Stoudemire(notes) and Carmelo Anthony. Stoudemire is the NBA’s premier scorer at the big forward position, sorry Dirk, and Carmelo is a solid second behind Kevin Durant(notes). The problem is that someone like Dirk Nowitzki(notes) does untold things that don’t show up in a typical box score (like creating brilliant spacing and working from spots that leave obvious passing angles, even if he doesn’t get the assist), and things that do show up in the box score (like those once-a-week turnovers).

And Durant? Like Carmelo, he’ll hardly be confused with T.R. Dunn anytime soon, but unlike Carmelo he’s also surrounded by a brilliant cast of lockdown defenders and role-players.

Because the Knicks are grandfathered into massive deals with Stoudemire and Anthony, they’ll hit next summer’s big free-agent offseason with over $44 million in salary tied up in just four players, with the [championship-contending] core combining for just over $40 million. We have no idea what the next collective bargaining agreement is going to look like, and no clue as to where the cap is going to be set. But it nearly goes without saying that the Knicks will have to be awfully creative to finagle a max-making third star into signing a deal with New York.

And doing so, at least under the old rules, would leave New York top-heavy as they struggled to fill out the rest of their roster; not unlike last year’s Miami Heat. The Miami Heat contended for a championship. Could a Knick team with an approximation of Miami’s trio do the same? Hard to tell. Hard to tell if they can even get a chance to, considering the next CBA.

What’s worst? Even if the NBA resolves its lockout in the next few weeks, Knick fans will have to wait at least another year before finding out if they can lose the brackets surrounding “[championship-contending].”

Related: Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, Amar’e Stoudemire, Dirk Nowitzki, Miami Heat

BALTIMORE — After seeing his first game action of the summer, Carmelo Anthony declared himself 100 percent healthy. “I’m back like I never missed a game,” the Knicks star said last night. Anthony was plagued by chronic bursitis in…  Read Full Story