The Los Angeles Lakers, heading into the 2021-22 season, built one of the strongest rosters in the league on paper.
Alongside the championship duo of LeBron James and Anthony Davis, they added Russell Westbrook and Carmelo Anthony.
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If someone had told you back in 2012, when those four players delivered Team USA its second consecutive gold medal, that one day you would see them together on the same roster, you probably would have said that team would cruise to a championship with ease.
Still, those were different times, when Anthony and Westbrook were far from their best versions.
Even though he was no longer in his prime, Melo could still deliver points at ease and be the perfect complementary piece to his great friend from the 2003 draft class, Bron.
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Recently, Melo said that this was actually the best season of his career.
“In all honesty, my best year that I’ve ever had was with the Lakers,” said Anthony on CTRL The Narrative. “When you look at the numbers and the efficiency and field goal percent, we’re in a game of numbers now and analytics, so if you look at analytics, the Lakers’ year was one of my best years out of 19 seasons.”
That season is nowhere near his prime years with the Nuggets and Knicks
That season, Anthony appeared in 69 games, starting just three of them, and in 26.0 minutes per game he averaged 13.3 points and 4.2 rebounds on 44.1 percent shooting from the field and 37.5 percent beyond the arc. Of course, statistically, that season is nowhere near his prime years with the Denver Nuggets and New York Knicks, but clearly the role and the team around him suited him well in those years.
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The very fact that Melo refers to analytics and numbers reveals that his per-36-minute stats were 18.4 points and 5.8 rebounds on average, which are very solid numbers, along with a career high two-point shooting percentage. Melo thrived in a system where he played more off-ball basketball, waiting for Russ or LBJ to find him open.
Still, despite the seemingly strong roster, the Lakers struggled with injuries, which ultimately resulted in 41 different starting lineups. Therefore, finishing 11th in the West with a 33-49 record should not surprise anyone and Anthony explains why the Lakers superteam didn’t work.
“We had the best chemistry off the court … that was considered a super team. The best times off the floor. We get on the court; sometimes, we couldn’t figure it out. It’s like, damn, why we can’t… is it the situation, is it the system. What is it? And we was always trying to search for what was it? What was the fix? And it was like we could never find out what was the fix,” Melo said.
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Carmelo adapted very well to the role of a role player
Carmelo was excited to team up with LeBron, once a great rival and at the end of his career a man with whom he tried to make it easier to win a chip.
Carmelo adapted very well to the role of a role player, completely adjusted to the team for the purpose of winning a title, which, for a player who only a few seasons earlier was considered one of the best in the league, was a big thing.
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Still, as Melo himself admitted, things just didn’t click on the court and they are just another example of how pairing aging stars near the end of their careers, when they are far from their best days, rarely ends well.
This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Sep 22, 2025, where it first appeared in the Latest News section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.