So the idea of D'antoni and co. that we should take three guys who can't really make it past the second round on the same team. I'm a big Chris Paul fan, but I'm skeptical of how he'd fit with Melo if they acquire him. I think Paul and Harden(even if he's my least favorite player. Suck it. Westbrook deserved it) would work well together, but Melo is a vacuum. I'd rather see a Paul-Harden-George team
On paper, the trio of Paul, Harden and Anthony looks disgusting. Could very well be. But it's difficult not to wonder about the fact that Harden and Anthony had the 3rd and 4th highest percentage of ISO scoring plays of the league's 391 players. Chris Paul wasn't far behind at 13th. I personally feel more comfortable with Paul considering that he's a historically efficient passer who's arguably the best double threat in the league given that he's been no worse than 3rd in pull up points over the past 4 seasons. More impressively, he's shot 43.4%, 47.7%, 42.7% and 46.1% in that span. Those are better averages than the likes of Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant; granted that the degree of difficulty on their shots is arguably higher, but the data only means to serve the point that Paul is a highly underrated scorer in the pull up game.
Harden was basically right behind Paul in ISO scoring on a points basis, though he was worse than 10% lower in his FG% at 35.1%, par for the course as he hasn't shot above 38% himself in the same span. You could very well argue that having Paul could take the pressure off of Harden, as long as his role doesn't change to playing more off-the-ball. The duo of Paul of Harden absolutely has a chance to survive. Harden was unsurprisingly among the league leaders in USG% with 34.1%. However, Paul was a distant second in comparison with just 24.3%, with Blake Griffin eclipsing him at 27.8%. Furthermore on the plus side, we've seen two ball-dominant duos thrive in Kyrie Irving and LeBron James, who were neck-and-neck among the league leaders in both USG% with 30.2% and 29.7% and ISO scoring plays with 21.4% and 20.3%, respectively, the latter good for 6th and 7th best in the league. In a general sense, under the same roles, introducing a third ISO-heavy scorer is likely to stunt ball movement to an extent in a league where the latter is key, it could slightly dull Paul's value. The determining factor will likely be whether one of the two outside of Paul is willing to accept a larger role as catch-and-shoot scorers, which isn't an impossibility with Anthony being in the Top 20 in CAS points and a rock solid FG% of 44.8%. George was 4th in the league in points in this category and had a steady FG% himself with 43.6%. Obviously the latter would be the better get, especially since they'd sandwich Harden between two very good defenders. It might work with Anthony as well as long as they can alter the roles to the benefit of ball movement. In either case, even if they don't land another highly touted FA, this dynamic will be one of the most interesting story lines to watch this season.
