Los Angeles Lakers‘ guard Kobe Bryant believes they did everything they could to land top tier players during the NBA‘s free agency period
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After suffering through a 27-55 season, the Los Angeles Lakers were hoping for better results this season.
Despite the return of future Hall-of-Fame guard Kobe Bryant, the Lakers have gotten off to an awful start and are 0-4.
That’s clearly not the way they envisioned it. In fact, they landed a meeting with New York Knicks‘ forward Carmelo Anthony and talked to the agent for Cleveland Cavaliers‘ forward LeBron James.
“It was really tough to land those free agents just because of the opportunities that they had,” Kobe Bryant said via Marc J. Spears of Yahoo.com. “You got ‘Melo going back to New York, LeBron going back home to Cleveland. The odds just weren’t in our favor. But I took comfort in the fact that the Lakers did absolutely everything possible to make it happen. Absolutely everything possible.
They also lost Pau Gasol to the Chicago Bulls. According to Kobe Bryant, they did everything they could to keep Pau Gasol as well.
“We offered Pau an incredible deal. I saw them put the work in. It’s much different than in 2007 when I felt like they were just sitting on their hands. This is not that case. They were going after it and being aggressive. I will fight for that till the end. They tried, tried and tried and it didn’t work out. I stand behind them 110 percent. I bleed purple and gold.”
The Lakers have positioned themselves pretty well in the future. They could pursue free agents in 2015 and will almost certainly be involved in the heralded class of 2016.
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