The Los Angeles Lakers visit New York on Sunday afternoon to participate in the saddest of all bowls, with an injured and dispirited 13-34 Laker team ta(n)king on a just-as-dispirited and just-as-intent-on-tanking 9-38 Knicks team. The visiting Lakers are on pace for 23 wins, while the hometown Knicks are defending their famed turf with a winning percentage that would leak out to 18 wins over the course of a full season. That mark would serve as an all-time franchise low for New York, which has worked in pro ball since 1946, and the lowest-ever mark for the “Los Angeles” version of the Lakers, spanning some 55 years.
These are latter days, we know, odd for two franchises that feature two superstars who were voted into the starting lineup for this month’s All-Star Game. Kobe Bryant and Carmelo Anthony were only voted into those positions because of their fame and status as a top scorer on teams with major followings, but Anthony has at least had a fringe All-Star year at times while working through myriad injuries, and Bryant at one point was amongst the NBA’s top scorers even if he was going about his work in dubious fashion.
And both had a chance to pair up last summer, when Anthony was an unrestricted free agent, and Kobe Bryant was purportedly looking to pair with one other superstar in a quest to get back into the championship picture.
Or playoffs, even.
Prior to Sunday’s contest, Marc Berman at the New York Post quoted Anthony recollection of the July 2014 meeting:
“They came in at the 25th hour, they swooped in there,’’ said Anthony, who owns an apartment in Los Angeles. “It was a great visit. The conversations I had with Kobe was just man to man. We both had to come to reality and say, ‘Is this what we really want?’ And it didn’t happen.
“We’ve been talking for a long time, man, especially this summer, just me and him communicating, and talking and being honest with one another as friends and brothers should be. It was a lot going on there on his behalf and my behalf trying to figure everything out.’’
So Carmelo and Kobe both decided that it wasn’t going to work out. This coming on the heels of this:
… and Kobe’s open and obvious recruitment of Dallas guard Rajon Rondo, who is shooting 37 percent over his last nine games with the Mavericks, taking just 19 free throws as a Maverick, making five.
Kobe does have a type.
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Bryant and Anthony weren’t wrong, despite what Carmelo said was a “great presentation” at Anthony’s house in Los Angeles. The Knick forward would be turning down around $34 million to move to Los Angeles, and even Bryant at his most blustery would admit that a team filled with Kobe and Anthony and a host of spare parts would only be marginally better than the team that plays in Los Angeles – one featuring just Kobe and a host of spare parts.
Sadly the team doesn’t even currently feature Kobe, who is out nine months with a torn rotator cuff in his right shoulder – his third consecutive major season-ending injury. Bryant is not going to leave $25 million in guaranteed cash on the table to walk away from the game next season, but his attempts to go out on his own well-heeled terms have been deadening to watch. Especially to Carmelo, who dealt with a less severe version of Bryant’s injury two years ago. From the Post:
“It’s tough to see my brother go through that right now this late in his career,’’ Anthony said. “It kills me to see him going through that.’’
There is a silver lining, however gray.
For the first time in either franchise’s history, the two teams are working through an obvious rebuilding situation. The Lakers went into full tank mode before the season, acquiring draft picks and only signing player to either one-year deals or contracts with team options that could expire during the 2015 offseason. The draft pick protections stipulated by the 2012 Steve Nash deal made it of paramount importance that the team slide into the lower five slots in this year’s draft, otherwise the franchise would have to give up their 2015 selection to Phoenix. Despite team president Jeannie Buss stating that it doesn’t really matter when the Lakers give up a pick to the Suns.
The squad may even take the same approach this summer, with few obvious boffo free agent candidates seemingly in line to join Kobe Bryant in what will probably be his final season. That move would leave the Lakers with Julius Randle, a high end 2015 draft pick, and scores of cap space heading into the post-Kobe era. If the Lakers bottom out into the top three in the 2016 draft lottery, they’ll also get to keep that selection from Phoenix (the pick would go to the Suns in 2017, free of restrictions).
Is that an inglorious way to end Kobe’s career? Sure. It’s not like the last two calendar years have been anything resembling appropriate, though.
The Knicks haven’t had the same trade success as the Lakers so far. Whereas Los Angeles managed to gobble a first-round pick from Houston for taking on Jeremy Lin’s contract, New York made moves last summer to help the team shoot for a mediocre record, and they failed to take on any first-rounders in deals that sent the much-admired Iman Shumpert and the still-potent (at times) J.R. Smith to Cleveland.
Still, the team is finally committing to a slow rebuild and change of culture, currently ranked with the third-best odds at the top overall pick this year (Los Angeles is one spot behind them), and moving past the win-now-at-all-costs ethos that has marred the James Dolan years and even the years and decades prior to the enfant terrible taking over the famed franchise. Even when former general manager Donnie Walsh attempted to work through an intelligent rebuild, Dolan and unceremonious crony Isiah Thomas overruled the ostensible GM in pushing far too many assets out in dealing for Anthony far too early.
As for Carmelo and Kobe, it’s certain that the pairing wasn’t going to help either side. It’s unclear, exactly, as to what sort of roster an aging yet still bullheaded Bryant would be able to work successfully on, or if he’d even give in to such a setup.
Anthony? That’s a lot of money to turn down to work in the City That Never Sleeps, even if his surroundings are less than ideal.
The trick is going to be conjuring ideal surroundings in the years to come, in the face of two massive fan bases that are not exactly pleased at having their nationally televised Knicks/Lakers game taken off ABC in favor of a celebrity bowling tournament.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
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