Carmelo Anthony is Mad Online

It was a rough year for Carmelo Anthony. He moved to a new city, he went from being the first option on the Knicks to the third option on the thunder, and he gave up a lot in the process. As Melo himself put it “I’ve sacrificed damn near everything, and was willing to sacrifice nearly everything for this situation to work out.” And despite all that, the Thunder lost in the first round.

After playing the good soldier all year, Melo let some anger out in his exit interview. “It wasn’t no strategy to me being here, me being a part of the actual system and what type of player and things like that,” he declared. And as for the idea that he should come off the bench, Melo was having none of that. “I’m not sacrificing no bench role. So that’s out of the question.”

It’s fair to say Melo was mad. And that’s perfectly understandable. His team had just lost fairly handily in the first round of the playoffs, he had just had the worst season of his career, and now people were telling him he should come off the bench. It’s only natural to let off a little steam in those circumstances. With time and distance however, you would expect Carmelo to cool off and, perhaps, admit that he is no longer the player he once was and cosnider accepting a bench role.

Alas, I regret to inform you all that not only is Carmelo still mad, he is the worst kind of mad- he is Mad Online. What does that mean? Allow me to explain.

In the real world, things make us mad all the time- losing makes us mad, our jobs make us mad, politics makes us mad. Getting mad in the real world, as long as people are reasonable about it, is an accepted and not particularly notable phenomena. Getting Mad Online is different, however. When you get Mad Online, you allow yourself to be driven to anger by someone behind a screen you have never met, who you probably never will meet. You have played right into the hands of some anonymous troll. As the kids put it, you’ve been owned.

Even normal, anonymous people are laughed at for becoming Mad Online, but it’s even worse when the rich and famous do it. After all, if you have millions of dollars, why would you waste even a second of your day getting mad about what some doofus on the internet said? The very idea of Elon Musk, billionaire, getting angry at what someone tweeted at him is bizarre. Dude, just go buy a mansion or something to make yourself feel better if you’re upset. And yet, at this very moment, Elon Musk, net worth of $18.8 billion dollars, is arguing with his haters online. Maybe he’s onto something- being rich and spending your days arguing with people on twitter is a proven path to the White House.

Back to Carmelo. Earlier this week, an account with about 10,000 followers called all.nba.riddles posted this to their account:

Everyday, thousands of similar accounts post stuff like this, because occasionally people want content that isn’t Jordan/LeBron comparisons and random free agents photoshopped into Lakers jerseys (90% of any good basketball instagram’s content). People argue about them for a few hours, get bored, and then something else gets posted and the cycle resets. This is how REAL HOOPS FANS kill time waiting for the games to start at night.

For whatever reason however, this particular post happened to make its way onto Carmelo’s feed, and he was NOT HAVING IT. This random instagram account, reposting a random tweet they had stolen without attribution, would not be allowed to defame his good name without Melo defending himself:

The account that originally made the post then made a post about how Melo commented on their article. This is why you must never respond to your haters- by responding, you give them more content. As they say, never punch down. Never give the enemy content.

By the way: Korver did in fact have a much better season than Melo. Korver shot 43.6% from deep this year to Carmelo’s 35.7%. The defense of Melo is that he had a much bigger role on the team, but that’s not a good thing. Melo shot 40.4% from the field, easily the worst mark in the entire league of anyone who averaged more than 15 attempts per game. He also ran 245- that’s Two Hundred and Forty Five! - isolation possessions in the regular season, shooting a paltry 40% on them and killing the team’s ball movement in the process. Korver ran 3 ISOs the entire season. Korver might have had a smaller role on his team, but he played efficient, winning basketball while he was out there. Melo, to put it mildly, did not. Melo might still have the pure talent edge, but he tried to play like a player he no longer is, and hurt his team in the process. Korver found his niche, excelled within it, and didn’t try to do anything more. That makes Korver a better NBA player this year.

Anyways, while it’s funny that Melo got mad about some random instagram account slandering him, maybe there’s an upside to this. If Melo is interested in proving to the world that he’s indeed better than Kyle Korver, he has two options. The first would be to challenge him to a televised game of 1-on-1, which would be great to watch. The second would be to work hard on his game, accept a reduced role with OKC, and excel within that role- maybe even winning a 6th man of the year award in the process. We’ll see.

In the meantime, take note aspiring content creators- post enough slander, and you, too, can make famous NBA players Mad Online.