Los Angeles Lakers: Please, stay away from Carmelo Anthony

The Los Angeles Lakers made a good buyout signing in Tyson Chandler and could follow it up with a pretty poor buyout signing in Carmelo Anthony.

The Los Angeles Lakers needed help at the center position and got just that in Tyson Chandler. Chandler, who was bought out by the Phoenix Suns, seems revitalized on the Los Angeles Lakers and has played quite the role off the bench thus far.

With the success of Chandler in mind, the Lakers front office might be hungry to add another piece that they deem fit to help this roster. Of course, this naturally produces a connection to Carmelo Anthony, who has parted ways with the Houston Rockets after just 10 games.

According to Kevin O’Connor of The Ringer, on The Ringer NBA Show (h/t Silver Screen and Roll), the Lakers join the New Orleans Pelicans and Portland Trail Blazers as teams that are potentially interested in bringing in Anthony.

However, a day prior to O’Connor’s statement Marc Spears of ESPN reported that the Lakers were done making acquisitions, at least for the time being.

With information that contradicts itself, it is hard to get a grip on what the Los Angeles Lakers front office, and LeBron James, are thinking. Either way, Melo is a natural target due to his friendship with LeBron James.

https://twitter.com/KingJames/status/1061879534172041217

All I have to say to all of this information about Carmelo Anthony is please, please do not sign Melo.

To be fair, Anthony does get an unfair side of the media. At his best, Carmelo was one of the best scorers in the league and even finished third in MVP voting for the 2012-2013 season.

He, much like Dwight Howard, get the unfair assessment of being a loser because he has not yet won a ring in the sport that rings run supreme in evaluating a players legacy. And while Melo has never reached the mountaintop, he had a pretty good chance in 2009 with the Nuggets and 2013 with the Knicks.

Anthony probably has a Hall of Fame pedigree and with the loose standards of the Basketball Hall of Fame, will likely get in one day.

However, the tail end of his career has been absolutely horrendous and the Los Angeles Lakers cannot sign Anthony because at one point he was one of the best players in the league. Right now, Anthony is far more of a liability than an asset and should stay away from this young core.

The team has taken risks in the likes of Rajon Rondo and Lance Stephenson and to be fair, those two guys have panned out. JaVale McGee has been a huge surprise and as I said earlier, Tyson Chandler seems re-energized.

Anthony will not be one of those surprise signings and he has proved in his time with the Thunder and short stint with the Rockets that it is him that is the problem.

He is simply not athletic enough anymore to play iso basketball and be successful and certainly does not have the play style to play with this up-tempo Lakers team. His defense is awful, which is already something the Lakers struggle with.

A  quick glance over his stats over the last two years and you would think that Anthony would be a good piece to bring off the bench and provide a scoring spark to the Lakers.

That is simply not the case and at this point in his career, Anthony is not worth the money or the potential headache that he will bring.