https://rocketswire.usatoday.com/2018/09/22/mike-dantoni-may-not-play-carmelo-anthony-and-p-j-tucker-together/
Mike D'Antoni may not play Carmelo Anthony and P.J. Tucker together
Moke Hamilton
Before Chris Paul had even played a game with the Rockets, head coach Mike D'Antoni let it be known that he planned on staggering the minutes of Paul and James Harden such that one of the two would always be on the floor.
Apparently, he has similar plans for the combination of Carmelo Anthony and P.J. Tucker.
To this point, Anthony's arrival to the Rockets has been met with mixed reactions from across the league. There are some that believe that Anthony will be a net-positive for the Rockets while others think that his best days are behind him and that his defensive ineptitude will yield a net-negative for the club.
If there's one thing D'Antoni does well, though, is find combinations of lineups that work well together, that's probably why he's not planning on having Tucker and Anthony share the floor.
More will come next week but here's an interesting part of my conversation with Mike D'Antoni:
The projected CP3-Harden-Tucker-Melo-Capela lineup won't be seen much. Ideally, MDA wants Carmelo on the floor when Tucker is off, and vice versa. He sees them both as 4s.
— Kelly Iko (@KellyIkoNBA) September 21, 2018
Kelly Iko of The Athletic spoke with D'Antoni and will be publishing a story on the head coach and his thoughts on the squad, but D'Antoni has already revealed that in his system and on his team, he views both Anthony and Tucker as power forwards.
D'Antoni may be hinting that one of the two will be playing off the bench fairly often but the other is that both Gerald Green and Michael-Carter Williams may get some heavy rotation minutes.
In the small ball era, many teams are deploying three guard lineups, meaning that both Brandon Knight and Eric Gordon will likely see some increased floor time, as well.
At this point, it's difficult to guess exactly which eight or nine players will get the lion's share of rotation minutes from the coach, but knowing that Anthony and Tucker will be staggered does seem to give us a bit of a hint as to which way the head coach is planning on divvying his PT.
Anthony spent most of his career at small forward before moving to power forward with the Thunder last season.
Hopefully, for the Rockets, the results this year will be different.