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ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith was critical of LeBron James regarding his lack of support for new teammate Carmelo Anthony two years ago.
LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony, close friends off the court, are teammates now thanks to an offseason maneuver by Rob Pelinka, the LA Lakers vice president of basketball operations and general manager. But this partnership looked like it would never happen when Carmelo Anthony was stuck in NBA limbo during the 2018-19 season and no team wanted to opt for him. Many thought Anthony’s career was over back then.
As Smith points out, LeBron James didn’t recruit him to come and play for the LA Lakers during this bleak moment in Anthony’s career and it continues to bother the ESPN analyst.
“...but this precipitous drop-off that everybody tried to put out there about him (Anthony) when he couldn’t get a d--- job in the league, and then he ultimately ended up being interviewed right here in this studio with me, looking for a job, it was utterly ridiculous and insane that he was ever subjected to that,” Smith said. “And what did LeBron James do at that particular moment in time? The answer would be, ‘Nothing.’”
Carmelo Anthony played just 10 games for the Houston Rockets during the 2018-19 season before being traded and then discarded by his new team. Eventually, the Portland Trail Blazers took a shot at Anthony in November of 2019 and he played two productive years for them, averaging 14.3 points on 39.9 percent shooting from 3-point range.
LeBron James recruited Carmelo Anthony to LA Lakers
Fast forward to the summer of 2021, Carmelo Anthony and LeBron James are now teammates on an LA Lakers squad that’s looking to win the NBA championship. Speaking about the move, Anthony said:
“Once (the Lakers) reached out, I was with Bron a couple of times and I’m sure everybody thought we were talking about it, but we never had no conversations about it. Bron came to me one time and just said ‘The time is now. I want you. We got to make this happen’ and I took that information and took that dialogue and took my time with it and weighed all the options. I just felt like for right now, I think this was the best time for us. I mean, most people will say we should have got together years ago early in our career but we were in two different lanes, we were on two different paths. Everything came full circle.”
Based on his statement, it appears that Anthony isn’t taking it against his good buddy that he wasn’t in his radar during his unemployment.
But some, like Smith, still harbor ill will toward LeBron James for not trying to push the Lakers to sign Anthony to a veteran minimum contract two years ago if he was able to do so now. Nevertheless, James and Anthony are now teammates and have a great chance of winning a title together.
