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#reallytho David Stern, nobody was crying when they put the big three together in Miami,
Now since it’s the Lakers they want to start hating, the small market teams suck and
nobody wants to play there that’s just how it is….cut a couple of those teams out then
and make the league a lil more competitive….F.O.H. to David Stern and all the Laker
Haters…
On the eve of the sport’s formal re-opening for business after a five-month lockout,
NBA commissioner David Stern sent shockwaves throughout the league Thursday night
by nixing the league-owned New Orleans Hornets’ plans to trade guard Chris Paul to
the Los Angeles Lakers. Within an hour of the Hornets striking an agreement in prin-
ciple with the Lakers and Houston Rockets on a three-team trade that would have
landed Paul in the same backcourt as Kobe Bryant, Stern informed the Hornets that
they couldn’t make the trade, stunning team officials who had been working around-
the-clock for days in hopes of bringing an end to the Paul saga before the season offi-
cially started. Amid a stream of reports that angry owners were demanding the trade
be vetoed, on the same day those owners had gathered in New York to ratify a new
labor pact purportedly designed to foster competitive balance and prevent small-market
teams from being raided for their stars, league officials tried to dispute claims of a re-
volt by insisting that the decision was Stern’s. “It’s not true that the owners killed the
deal,” NBA spokesman Mike Bass said. “The deal was never discussed at the Board of
Governors meeting and the league office declined to make the trade for basketball rea-
sons.” Explain to me what basketball Reasons ????? Yet in an email to Stern obtained
by Yahoo! Sports and The New York Times, Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert
called the proposed deal “a travesty” and urged Stern to put the deal to a vote of “the
29 owners of the Hornets,” referring to the rest of the league’s teams. The proposed
trade would have sent Paul to the Lakers, Pau Gasol to the Rockets and furnished New
Orleans with three top-flight NBA players in Kevin Martin, Luis Scola and Lamar Odom
as well as playoff-tested guard Goran Dragic and a 2012 first-round pick that Houston
had acquired from the Knicks. The general reaction among rival executives was that
Hornets general manager Dell Demps did as well as he could under the circumstances
after Paul told the Hornets on Monday he would not sign a contract extension this sea-
son and instead planned to become a free agent July 1, 2012. But Stern stepped in to
nix the swap and leave all three teams with several shell-shocked players and officials
heading into Friday’s scheduled start of training camps, after the commissioner insisted
for months that Hornets general manager Dell Demps and the rest of the team’s front
office had autonomy over basketball decisions. Sources close to the situation said Demps
and teams that have pursued Paul had been assured the Hornets had the clearance to
trade Paul as they saw fit. “WoW,” was Paul’s reaction on Twitter. Said Odom via his
Twitter feed: “When a team trades u and it doesn’t go down? Now what?” In Paul’s case,
sources told ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith that the angry All-Star will not be reporting to
Hornets camp on Friday and will instead explore his legal options with NBA Players
Association executive director Billy Hunter, while maintaining the stance the deal is
merely “on hold” as opposed to squashed. The Los Angeles Times, meanwhile, reported
that Odom also intends to skip the first day of Lakers camp, while the Rockets were
said to be crestfallen after missing out on Gasol, who was targeted to fill the void created
by Yao Ming’s retirement. It’s a good trade for all parties so they better get it together..
