Quote of the Week: “We Made A Very Good Case for Carmelo”
To the casual observer, the Lakers summer of strikeouts meant welcome to basketball hell. The franchise that can print their own money, that’s on the air 24 hours a day, that has in its back pocket glamorous surroundings and beautiful women and pricey seats and adoring stars, well, they just took one on the chin. Again. This was rock bottom, worse than what happened when the Lakers put up Dwight Howard billboards all over the city and he rejected their sophomoric attempt to keep him happy.
Oct 14, 2014; Syracuse, NY, USA; New York Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony (7) shoots the ball during the third quarter of a pre-season game against the Philadelphia 76ers at the Carrier Dome. The Knicks won 84-77. Mandatory Credit: Mark Konezny-USA TODAY Sports
It was the Lakers summer of nothing except…it ignores the details. Star players in big markets don’t have the incentive or the heart to leave a dedicated fan base that will turn on them like a piranha turns on a blue gill. Losing isn’t a strong enough motivator, not when the money is plentiful and continuous, the fame feeds their ego, the adoration is intoxicating and the familiar routine makes it comfortable. Players build a life for their families in neighborhoods where they have stories and memories and aunts and uncles and black and white photographs of what they did when they were hanging out on Fulton Street.
Carmelo Anthony stayed in New York, the place where he was born, for the same reason Lebron James returned to Cleveland, the place where he was born, for the same reason Derrick Rose will probably never leave Chicago, the place where he was born. In NBA history, this homesickness is unprecedented and having an effect. Teams, who in the past, had no chance at snagging an All-Star now see a foot in the door. It has the Charlotte Hornets hoping they can make a play for Steph Curry in three years. The Washington Wizards may in fact sign Kevin Durant.
The Lakers failure to land Carmelo was predictable. He told Ramona Shelburne of ESPN.com, “I felt more comfortable staying in New York.”
Jeanie Buss said, “We made a very good case for Carmelo. But he’s in New York.”
New York, again. Meaning, God himself couldn’t unearth Carmelo and his family away from the Knicks, not when he purposefully engineered a trade to get there. The addition of Phil Jackson only sealed the deal. Carmelo was never going to play outside of Manhattan. But he liked the all the attention, the fawning, the cleverness and the idea of leaving. He enjoyed the theory but not the reality. When he turned the Chicago Bulls down, who were his best chance at an immediate title, you knew he was just flirting.
Jeanie Buss wasn’t fazed in the least, nor should she have been. From all accounts, the Lakers did for Carmelo what they didn’t do for Dwight Howard. They were creative, they pulled out all the stops, they were all in. Carmelo just did not want to leave the Knicks.
Jeanie also squashed the theory that Kobe Bryant was directly related to Carmelo turning the Lakers down. “Any free agent that would be afraid to play with Kobe Bryant is probably a loser and I’m glad they wouldn’t be on the team.”
Hmmm…Did she just call Dwight Howard a loser?
Oct 7, 2014; Dallas, TX, USA; Houston Rockets center Dwight Howard (12) gets the ball in the post against the Dallas Mavericks at American Airlines Center. Mandatory Credit: Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports
It’s no secret that Dwight didn’t want to re-sign with the Lakers because of competitor, sadist, hero, lord to Dwight Howard’s serf, Kobe Bryant. I’ll give Dwight credit for self-awareness. He knew he couldn’t take three more years of fanatical Kobe running things like a dictator and passive-aggressive Dwight in the background pretending he liked it when he didn’t, pretending Los Angeles, as a city, was a good fit for him, when it wasn’t.
Jeanie made it a point to say that the root of Dwight Howard’s animosity was a direct reflection of a particular basketball decision. The Lakers hired Mike D’antoni in order to get the most out of 38 year old Steve Nash who had been struggling up to that point. That left Dwight Howard as the third most important person on the team. As decisions go, it hit Howard straight in the ego. It marginalized everything Howard had ever been in the NBA- because everything he had ever been centered around him as the brightest light.
And yet, Dwight Howard would have tolerated Mike D’antoni if Kobe Bryant had been gone.
Carmelo doesn’t see Kobe as a hindrance. He said, “I’d always love to play with Kobe.”
Dwight, though, was not psychologically equipped to have a player like Kobe Bryant continuously setting a standard he could not meet. Perfectionist Kobe and casual Dwight were a hellish combination. It was a lot easier to go somewhere else. But first there was that amnesty thing, Dwight’s one last shot to get the Lakers to be his team, to have something given to him that he did not earn. But like his free throws, Howard’s last desperate attempt at Los Angeles immortality failed to draw iron. The Lakers, unwilling to cut their ties to a player who was responsible for five championship and millions in revenue, watched Dwight Howard take “his talents” to Houston and then lose in the first round of the playoffs.