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Mario Hezonja says that the toughest player to guard isn't currently playing in the NBA (Is it Carmelo?)

March 07, 2019
Miami Heat v New York Knicks

Elsa

New York Knicks small forward Mario Hezonja has guarded some of the NBA's best players this season. Ben Simmons, Blake Griffin, Giannis Antetokounmpo, just to name a few. In other words, he's got firsthand experience, enough to form an opinion on who the toughest guy to defend is. According to Hezonja, the holder of that title is not even playing in the league right now.

On Wednesday, Super Mario tweeted out this opinion, and we cannot stress "opinion" enough, to his 12.1K followers (kind of low for a New York Knick, wouldn't you say?), igniting a fiery debate about who he could be talking about:

Since this is Twitter, we all had more than one guess. Though it didn't take long for everyone to agree on an answer, especially with the help of this exchange in Hezonja's replies:

Starting the tweet with "Iso" right off the bat, and with the knowledge this player is not in the NBA, the mind immediately goes to two options: Carmelo Anthony and Kobe Bryant. But, as you continue to read the tweet, which lists off all the things Melo and Kobe both did extremely well, you'll notice Hezonja use the word "bully." While Anthony will always be known as "Melo," he was also often referred to as "bully" for his style of play in the post, where he'd aggressively use his body to gain position, like a bully would. Many NBA fans on Twitter put two and two together and the consensus seems to be that Mario was referring to Melo:

Well there you have it. Melo is the toughest player to guard in the NBA, or was, according to Mario Hezonja, who never actually specifically said it was Carmelo. Mystery solved!