Carmelo Anthony a necessary stopgap for Portland Trail Blazers

Floundering and falling in the standings, the Portland Trail Blazers will look to Carmelo Anthony to fill in the gaps and stop some of the bleeding.

It took over 365 days and an appearance on ESPN First Take, but Carmelo Anthony will make his long-awaited return to the NBA.

The 10-time All-Star reportedly agreed to a non-guaranteed contract with the Portland Trail Blazers Thursday night, as first reported by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, linking him with Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum on a team in desperate need of a revival.

After the high of a Western Conference Finals appearance last postseason, the Blazers have come out sluggish at just 4-8. A shoulder injury to Zach Collins has sent the promising forward to the bench for at least four months, stretching Portland’s already suspect frontcourt depth dangerously thin with Jusuf Nurkic still on the mend.

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Terry Stotts has mixed and matched his wing options to find anything that clicks. Anthony Tolliver has seen some run in the starting lineup. So has Mario Hezonja. Most recently, it was rookie Nassir Little who got the call in a 114-106 home loss to the Toronto Raptors.

None of them seemed to provide any single trait to mesh alongside Portland’s dynamic backcourt. The third-best offense in the league last season has dropped to 14th, digging a hole the Blazers now must climb out of if they are to leapfrog their competitors and return to the playoffs.

To be clear, Carmelo isn’t the magical fix to all that ails Portland, not even at the offensive end.

Portland won’t ask Anthony to create much. That’s what Lillard and McCollum do best. He struggled as a spot-up shooter with the Houston Rockets across 10 games last season, ranking in the 40th percentile of such looks while shooting just 32.8 percent from beyond the arc.

Even during his prime years, Anthony was a liability at the defensive end of the floor. These days, his slow feet are constantly getting exposed by the more explosive power forwards of today’s NBA.

The Blazers don’t switch nearly as many screens as Houston does, allowing Carmelo to remain more stationary. But in giving up the ninth-most points per game, they don’t exactly have the personnel to mask Melo’s deficiencies if they hope to play him big minutes.

The truth is Portland didn’t really have any other options when it comes to finding some help up front. The free-agent market is non-existent while Anthony, even at his advanced age of 35, is a battle-tested playoff veteran motivated to prove he can still play.

Yes, the season isn’t even a month old, but in the superior Western Conference, a slow start can doom playoff hopefuls. It’s why the Blazers had to act fast before falling too far behind, with the only legitimate course of action — barring a trade — staring them right in the face.

Carmelo has been looking for another shot in the league with a strongly held belief in his ability to contribute to a winning cause. Perhaps his workout videos are legit or maybe this will be his last hurrah.

Whatever the future holds for Anthony’s latest chapter and how it impacts Portland’s season, it’s hard to fault the Blazers for trying to right the ship with a flyer the other 29 NBA teams were too afraid to take.