On Tuesday night, the Oklahoma City Thunder dropped a tight 111-107 game to the Golden State Warriors at Chesapeake Energy Arena in Oklahoma. While the game was significant for multiple reasons — like Kevin Durant returning to OKC draped in enemy colors and a 44-point, 16-assist game from Russell Westbrook — one historic feat is being left out of the conversation: Carmelo Anthony had a career-worst 0-9 performance from three-point land.

The fact that Carmelo shot nine times from three isn’t surprising. In fact, he’s attempted nine-or-more threes on 18 different occasions this year and has made two or more every time. When you break it down, he’s actually shot better on these occasions (40.8 percent; 78 for 181) than the other 56 games he’s played in (33.5 percent; 90 for 268). Yet, on Tuesday night, nothing would fall no matter how many times he rose up from deep. Out of all 1,050 games Melo had played in before Tuesday, he’d NEVER gone 0-9 from beyond the arc (or even 0-8).

After digging through page upon page of ‘Melo game logs — thanks, Basketball-Reference — the closest thing you could find was an 0-7 outing back in 2014 (a win versus Philadelphia). This season, his previous worst was 0-5 (four different times).

Speaking with reporters after the game, Carmelo agreed the team “didn’t shoot the ball well” but that they still had “a chance to win the basketball game”. He makes a good point, the Thunder were right in it until the end and only trailed by a bucket with 20 seconds remaining.

With all that said, I’m not in the F*ck Carmelo Club like a lot of other NBA writers. He’s helped OKC win a lot of games, has 27 games with 20-plus points, and has finally accepted a dumbed-down role for the sake of the squad. Let’s not forget that Allen Iverson could have played a lot longer had he done the same.

“Shooters keep shootin’, soon enough you gon’ feel the heat…” -Asher Roth on “Rasputin”

We want Carmelo and the Thunder to succeed over here; they’re one of the most exciting teams to watch in the NBA. Come playoff time, they’ll need vintage mid-range ‘Melo at some point when the games are slowed down — you can bet on it. Now, if Russ chooses to feed the post in that situation is another thing. He may just hoist a contested three with six seconds off the shot clock instead…it wouldn’t surprise anyone.

Melo needs to shake this one off and focus on winning the next few games. Those shots will start falling sooner or later, and when they are, the Thunder can play with anyone in the NBA.

Oklahoma City (45-34) is the six-seed in the Western Conference but leads Denver by just 1.5 games. They’ll have a tough nationally-televised game against Houston on Saturday.