Lakers Rumors: Los Angeles didn’t think Carmelo Anthony would be available
By Josh Hill
The Los Angeles Lakers are trying to convince prized free agent Carmelo Anthony that he should sign their four year max offer to them but we’re starting to learn more and more about why they’re in the crunch they seem to be in. One of the reasons they’re a bit strapped for cash has to do with the bad contract they gave Kobe Bryant last summer as it’s now coming back to bite them this summer.
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According to Forbes, the reason that the Lakers offered Kobe that crazy money was because they were wholly convinced that LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony would not be on the market in the summer of 2014.
"In fact when the team gave Bryant that extension–at the prompting of Jeanie Buss, the popular member of the family, before Kobe returned from injury and lasted six games–the word around the organization was: We did this knowing that James and Anthony aren’t likely to be on the market and if they are, we’re not likely to have a shot at them."
Oops.
It’s not often that the Lakers make bad business decisions but then again this is a new and strange era for the team which has seen them do nothing but lose and make very poor choices. The bloated Kobe contract, the misadventure with Steve Nash, the super misadventure with Dwight Howard, the firing of Mike Brown, the hiring of Mike D’Antoni — the list goes on.
This failure to have foresight is something the old Lakers team from the 2000s wouldn’t have missed butt his regime did and it’s now coming back to bite them in the worst of ways.