Thursday, December 08, 2011

Chris Paul goes to L.A.!

[12/08/11] The Los Angeles Lakers have reached an agreement to acquire All-Star point guard Chris Paul in a three-team trade that will cost them Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom, league sources told Yahoo! Sports.

The Lakers have finalized the trade with the New Orleans Hornets and Houston Rockets. The Lakers sent Gasol to the Rockets. The Hornets receive Odom, Rockets guards Kevin Martin and Goran Dragic and forward Luis Scola, league sources said.

Houston also agreed to send a 2012 first-round pick – previously obtained from the Knicks – to New Orleans as part of the package, a source said.

***

Not so fast.

NBA commissioner David Stern killed the New Orleans Hornets’ trade of Chris Paul after several owners complained about the league-owned team dealing the All-Star point guard to the Los Angeles Lakers, league sources told Yahoo! Sports.

Some owners pushed Stern to nullify the trade and that the Hornets be made to keep Paul on the roster for the foreseeable future, sources said. A chorus of owners were irate with the belief that the five-month lockout had happened largely to stop big-market teams from leveraging small-market teams for star players pending free agency.

The trade between the Lakers, Hornets and Houston Rockets had been consummated late Thursday afternoon, about the same time the league’s owners and players were completing their vote to ratify the new collective bargaining agreement – an agreement that Stern had repeatedly said would help restore the NBA’s competitive balance. League owners had watched last season as some of the game’s biggest stars left for larger markets. LeBron James and Chris Bosh joined Dwyane Wade and the Miami Heat, and Carmelo Anthony forced the Denver Nuggets to trade him to the New York Knicks.

Stern listened to enraged owners on Thursday insist this trade went against the entire reason the owners pushed for the lockout, that nothing had changed, and yet it was Stern who made the extraordinary decision to cancel the deal. Demps tried to talk him out of it, league officials said, but Stern was absolute in his desire to kill the trade.

Officials from New Orleans, Houston and Los Angeles were stunned Thursday night. The killed trade had ripple affects everywhere in free agency and potential trades, and literally pushed the market into paralysis on the even of training camps opening up.

“We were all told by the league he was a trade-able player, and now they’re saying that Dell doesn’t have the authority to make the trade?” said an NBA executive who had periodic talks with New Orleans throughout the process. “Now, they’re saying that Dell is an idiot, that he can’t do it his job. [Expletive] this whole thing. David’s drunk on power, and he doesn’t give a [expletive] about the players, and he doesn’t give a [expletive] about the hundreds of hours the teams put into make that deal.

“How do the Lakers explain this to Odom? How does Houston deal with the guys it just tried to trade? Scola and Martin are going to be pissed at them, and who knows how long that takes to get over? Explain to me how the league kills this Pau Gasol deal, but allows Kwame Brown for Pau Gasol?

“To me, this makes the league feel like it’s rigged, that Stern just does whatever Stern wants to do. He’s messed up the competitive balance of this league a lot worse by killing the deal, because you’ve completely destroyed the planning that New Orleans, Houston did and left them in shambles over this. I’ve never been so discouraged about this league, never so down.

“I mean, come on: Chris Paul is leaving New Orleans in 66 games. He’s gone. And what’s Dell Demps, and that franchise, going to have to show for it?”

***

NBA blocks trade to Clippers too.

*** [12/14/11]

The NBA has reached an agreement in principle to trade Chris Paul to the Los Angeles Clippers in a deal that will pair star forward Blake Griffin with one of the game’s top point guards, league sources told Yahoo! Sports.

The league-owned New Orleans Hornets will receive guard Eric Gordon, center Chris Kaman, forward Al-Farouq Aminu and the Minnesota Timberwolves’ unprotected 2012 first-round pick in return for Paul.

As part of the deal, Paul has agreed to not opt out of his contract after this season – allowing the Clippers to keep him at least through the 2012-13 season.

The trade ends an embarrassing week-long drama that began when the Hornets, Los Angeles Lakers and Houston Rockets reached agreement on a three-team trade to send Paul to the Lakers only to have NBA commissioner David Stern veto the deal after rival team owners complained. The three teams tried to restructure the trade, but the Lakers eventually backed out when it was clear the league’s demands couldn’t be met.

*** press conference ***

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