On the night where he scored his 28,000th point in the NBA, Carmelo Anthony made a huge difference for the Lakers.
They were down big to the Hornets early but nearly completed a 4th quarter comeback and that obviously ticked Michael Jordan off to the point where he became the NBA’s latest meme.
The key to the Lakers’ comeback, though, was the play of Carmelo Anthony. In a game the Lakers lost by 3 points, Anthony was a +20 coming off of the bench. He scored 19 points on 12 shots and got to the free throw line 7 times. Without his performance, they don’t have a shot at winning the game.
Anthony was asked about this in the postgame press conference. Specifically, he was asked if he’d seen how well he performed in the plus/minus category.
His answer was…he didn’t even really know what plus/minus was. He just knew minus was bad.
"I don't even know how to explain that…I know minus is bad." 🤣 @carmeloanthony (led LAL in +/- with +20) when asked if he pays much attention to the plus-minus statistic. @LakersReporter pic.twitter.com/2tr5DGJZHN
— Spectrum SportsNet (@SpectrumSN) January 29, 2022
“I don’t even know what that is. It is what it is. You know minus is bad…I know minus is bad”
That’s a hilarious explanation because it’s pretty spot-on and endearing.
Single-game plus/minus can be really weird. It’s not always the perfect indicator of anything — a player can contribute almost nothing but be a positive in the box score because the rest of their team performed well.
Anthony checked both boxes there and gave the Lakers a great game. And a hilarious press conference at the end. Good on Melo for that.
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