Pau Gasol Might Stay With The Lakers If They Acquire Carmelo Anthony
As we well know, Carmelo Anthony is on his all-inclusive free agent sweepstakes tour this week, meeting with the Chicago Bulls on Monday followed by the Dallas Mavericks and Houston Rockets on Wednesday. We also know that Anthony’s meeting with the Los Angeles Lakers will take place on Thursday, and Mike Bresnahan from the LA Times reports that Lakers center and free agent Pau Gasol will determine his immediate future with the Lakers based on the outcome of that meeting with Carmelo Anthony.
It was reported recently that Phil Jackson might be pursuing Gasol to pair him with Carmelo in New York, so maybe these two were just fated to play together. Bresnahan quotes someone “familiar with Pau’s thinking” as saying,
If the Lakers get Carmelo, Pau will stay.
Gasol is attracting his own attention as a free agent, earning interest from the Miami Heat, San Antonio Spurs, and more recently the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Chicago Bulls, who meet with Gasol on Thursday.
If Pau is willing to take less money, which he would have to, in order to make room for Carmelo Anthony in Los Angeles, there’s no reason why he won’t settle for the lesser deals available from these other teams. His mindset seems pretty clear. The upside for Gasol — San Antonio and Oklahoma City would particularly put him in a real position to stack some more jewelry right away.
It’s considered a long shot for the Lakers to land Anthony, and failing could mean losing the Spaniard to a title contender.
