Carmelo Anthony Explains Why He Believes LeBron Had No Idea About The Luka-AD Trade
Getty Image Melo explained why he believes the reports his friend had no clue the Luka-AD trade was about to go down on Saturday night.
Prior to the news breaking just after midnight ET on Saturday, there were just a handful of people that knew the Lakers and Mavericks were discussing a Luka Doncic for Anthony Davis trade. General managers Nico Harrison and Rob Pelinka were two, and owners Jeanie Buss and Patrick Dumont made it four. Beyond them, it’s not abundantly clear how many other people even in those front offices were given information about talks, and by all accounts, the trade never got discussed with any players on the two teams.
That led to Doncic, Davis, LeBron James, and Kyrie Irving all being blindsided by the deal like everyone else. While some have doubted that LeBron truly was in the dark given fans have long believed (and at times for good reason) that he’s had influence over his team’s moves, a lot of people connected to the league truly believe that was the case. Among them is James’ friend Carmelo Anthony, who explained on his 7PM in Brooklyn pod why that was the case (conversation starts at the 6:30 mark of the video below).
“I just don’t think he knew,” Anthony said. “Even when he was in Miami, Pat was making decisions and wasn’t bringing him a long or letting him know what was going on. Now you in LA and you at a point and a time where, in order to make certain sh*t happen, I can’t put certain people in these situations to actually have influence to f**k this up. LeBron couldn’t know. Rich Paul couldn’t know. Nobody else could know. Nobody knew. He knew AD was unhappy, that’s what he knew.”
As shocking as it is to folks that the Lakers would do this without LeBron, it really has made the most sense from the beginning that he was left in the dark, because the only way that trade goes down the way it did for the Lakers is if there are no leaks that talks are happening. The more people you involve, from players to agents, the more conversations happen and the greater the chance it gets reported. As Melo explains, the Lakers had to make a decision for the long-term future of the organization and not just this year, and this move didn’t really align with maximizing James’ timeline, so it wasn’t really a situation to involve him.
