If Kobe Bryant had gotten his way in 2011, Carmelo Anthony would now be a member of the Los Angeles Lakers, not the New York Knicks.
This, of course, assumes that the two stars would have coexisted together this long. There’s only one ball allowed on the floor at a time, you know. The offensive dynamic between Bryant and Anthony these last five years might not have been so easy to watch. Carmelo Anthony, to his credit, has turned into a legitimate off-ball weapon. Bryant has never made that transition, and there’s a chance Anthony himself might have resisted said change long enough for the marriage between him and one of his closest friends to sour ahead of his foray into free agency last summer. Just saying.
But that’s neither he nor there right now. The two have played together during the Olympics, and Bryant apparently wanted that union to carry over into the NBA’s regular season.
From SNY.TV’s Adam Zagoria:
In 2011, back when he was still in Denver, Anthony was linked to the Lakers in a deal that could have brought (the now broken down) Andrew Bynum to Denver and sent Nene to the Lakers along with Anthony.
“Kobe wanted to have it,” Carmelo Anthony said of the trade with a chuckle. “I don’t know who was going to be part of that deal. There was a lot of talks of Bynum and Lamar Odom and Nene, there was a lot of talks during those times. For some reason I was always connected with the Lakers, maybe it was just Kobe behind closed doors.”
Perhaps it was just Kobe behind closed doors. But what Kobe wanted behind closed doors in the past is usually what the Lakers tried to get done.
Finished with Shaquille O’Neal? Peace out, Shaq. Demanding a trade? We’ll make trades of our own.
And so on and so forth.
It’s probable, then, that the Lakers did try like hell to acquire Carmelo Anthony from the Nuggets in 2011. They were liberally linked to the months-long saga, and though their involvement could have been drummed up somewhat, the idea that they were slinging Andrew Bynum and Lamar Odom seems about right. The Lakers are a superstar-obsessed organization, as they have shown time and again, right down to the Dwight Howard trade in 2012, and Melo was/is a superstar. Plus, the Lakers targeted him in 2014, when he was a free agent, so it makes sense that they would have wanted to join the party three years earlier.
I wonder what would have happened if the Lakers landed Anthony. Would they have still traded for Howard? Would he have been more likely to stick around with Melo there? Are the Lakers the steaming pile of crap they are now?
So many feelz, none of them relevant. But with Kobe speeding toward retirement, get used to these types of anecdotes and the subsequent feelz they incite. More are undoubtedly on the way.
