Lakers News: Carmelo Anthony Says LA Will Be Ready

Carmelo Anthony says they are ready to play, and that they have been ready.

With an 0-5 record in the preseason, the Lakers have had more questions from the NBA community at large than excitement. The entire roster is new (other than LeBron James and Anthony Davis) so the adjustment period was inevitably going to be a longer process. Given that, Carmelo Anthony believes the Lakers are ready.

In a post-practice presser, Anthony had this to say.

I think we'll be ready. We'll be ready Tuesday. I know we'll be ready. You can feel it you can say you can hear it, but you hear a lot of things, but we'll be ready Tuesday. Me personally I've felt like that throughout the whole preseason. I just know the type of group that we have, the caliber of guys that we have, the mindset of the guys that's on this team, so like I said we'll be will be ready Tuesday. I don't think that we won't be ready Tuesday.

The subtext here is that Anthony is saying the effort and desire to win are there. The Lakers, for all the jokes about their age, are a team of veteran competitors. Guys like Anthony and Russell Westbrook are starving for an NBA championship, so their drive is assumedly even bigger. The subtext of Anthony's confidence is that the Lakers will be ready to compete, even if the cohesion isn't fully there yet. The end of Anthony's quote here tells his story.

"Now, will it all come together on Tuesday? Probably not but I'm will be ready for we'll be ready to play."

This can be easily misread. Anthony acknowledges that with a new squad of players, five games (where most of the starters did not play big minutes) is not enough time to gel and be a cohesive unit. Laker fans will need to exercise some patience.

What is cohesive and clear is that the Lakers will be ready to compete.