This time, it’s the right time.
When the Lakers made a free-agent pitch to Carmelo Anthony in 2014, they envisioned him as the next superstar to wear their uniform, that he’d be a perfect complement to Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol, that he could be a Hollywood star off the court and a winner on it.
Instead, he went back across the country and returned to New York.
The miss on Anthony accelerated the Lakers’ path into despair. They won only 21 games the following season. But the Knicks, who signed him to a five-year maximum deal that summer, wouldn’t sniff the playoffs during the length of that deal either.