Lakers Trading for Chris Paul

[mudyez]

Awesome. Now the Spurs can put together a package for him. If they sweeten the package with George Hill I think the Hornets will take it.

Not so fast, the trade can't happen
http://www.eightpointsnineseconds.co...e-george-hill/

[benefactor]

Not so fast, the trade can't happen
http://www.eightpointsnineseconds.co...e-george-hill/

Click for the punchline...

[mudyez]

lol

[whitemamba]

rofl at spurs getting cp..

[dbestpro]

This actually happened in baseball once. The big red machine had gotten Tom Seaver and was in the process of purchasing Vida Blue's contract when it was nixed by Kuhn the commissioner as it was thought to give the Reds too much of an unfair advantage.

[mudyez]

wow espn is acting like little children too:

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/73...ris-paul-trade

they seem to not even get, that the trade wasnt nixed coz of LA as a big market, but coz the NOH are owned by the owners.

LOL espn

[Bruno]

Dan Gilbert is awesome. Poor Cavs fans...

NBA owning the Hornets creates a clear conflict of interest. It isn't an healthy situation and the NBA better sell the franchise quickly. Another big reason why owners have reacted to this trade is that there are a lot of jealousy among them towards the $200M per year TV deal Lakers got. A lot of franchises are working their ass of just to broke even while Lakers have guaranteed huge benefits for 20 years. Owners try to fix that by more revenue sharing and a stiffer luxury tax but it's far from offsetting all the edge given by this gigantic TV deal.

[Mel_13]

The silver lining in this disaster is the spectacle of LakerFan crying that the NBA isn't fair.

[MannyIsGod]

Danny Granger:

Due to the sabotaging of the LA/NO trade by david stern, and following in the footsteps of my athlete brethern Metta World Peace and Chad Ochocinco, I'm changing my last name to "Stern's Bi#&h" #effectiveimmediately

http://m.tmi.me/j9xgT

ROFL.

Makes me proud that boy is a Lobo.

[K-State Spur]

This is a bigger issue. Seperate your hate for the Lakers from this and imagine a scenario where you gave up say Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili for say Russell Westbrook. Then the league comes in and tell you it is a no go even though both teams wanted to do it and no one else would give anywhere close to that much for Westbrook. Would you find that upsetting?

You have to see the Hornets for the situation they are in.

THE LEAGUE did not nix this deal. The Hornets' owners did. Owners nix trades all the time.

David Stern acted as lead owner of the Hornets, not as commissioner of the league. It may sound like semantics, but it's a HUGE difference.

[Seventyniner]

You have to see the Hornets for the situation they are in.

THE LEAGUE did not nix this deal. The Hornets' owners did. Owners nix trades all the time.

David Stern acted as lead owner of the Hornets, not as commissioner of the league. It may sound like semantics, but it's a HUGE difference.

The biggest problem is the way it went down. The Hornets GM and staff were told that they had the authority to do what they thought best. They worked hours and hours and finally got a deal done, only for the owners to tell them no. If Stern/other owners had really thought about this, they would've told the Hornets staff up front "no trading Paul to the Lakers."

[K-State Spur]

The biggest problem is the way it went down. The Hornets GM and staff were told that they had the authority to do what they thought best. They worked hours and hours and finally got a deal done, only for the owners to tell them no. If Stern/other owners had really thought about this, they would've told the Hornets staff up front "no trading Paul to the Lakers."

Agreed - PR nightmare. But owners nix trades at the last second all the time. It's being made a bigger deal that it would have because people see it as "the league" nixing it rather NOH owners.

But if I'm a 3% owner of NOH with a vote, I'm voting a resounding "no" on a deal that gives up an elite player, adds $15M in salary, makes me older, and doesn't add a single guy who is a first or second option on a WC playoff team.

[twilo73]

Agreed - PR nightmare. But owners nix trades at the last second all the time. It's being made a bigger deal that it would have because people see it as "the league" nixing it rather NOH owners.

But if I'm a 3% owner of NOH with a vote, I'm voting a resounding "no" on a deal that gives up an elite player, adds $15M in salary, makes me older, and doesn't add a single guy who is a first or second option on a WC playoff team.

Amen to this!!

Jordan nixed several times in teams that he has owned for example.

[Ginobili2Duncan]

It doesn't look great, but you know what? I don't blame them. Why should they stand back and let the Lakers form another potential dynasty? It's bull . No other franchise in North American pro sports has conveniently been saved every time the future looked bleak.

They'll take a PR hit for this, but who cares, it's about doing what's best for the league. To come out of the lockout and immediately have Paul traded to the Lakers (in a trade that makes no sense for the Hornets, no less), with Howard sure to follow, would look even worse.

Lakers fans are akin to a spoiled rich kid being told no for the first time. "You mean you're not going to hand us the best C and arguably the best PG in the game on a silver platter and keep us relevant for the majority of this decade? How could this happen? It's our birthright to never fade into obscurity".

Wojnarowski, Broussard, Smith and all of the other Bryant ass kissers in the media will probably throw a fit over this. This was their final chance for their beloved Bryant to have a shot to pass Jordan in rings.

I completely agree. This whole situation reeks. Anyone who believes this was a good trade for the Hornets is either a Laker fan or doesn't know anything about the league. And make no mistake Dwight Howard was definitely in the picture(he probably already had his bags packed for LA).

And I don't believe for a second that the league rejected the trade. I think that Stern and the league signed off on this deal and attempted to pull a fast one, but the owners wern't having any part of it. Now they have to save face and make it look like they were the ones who rejected the deal even though in actuality, they would've let this deal go through if the owners didn't say anything.

[cheguevara]

The NBA just became the laughingstock of the sports world. They are currently lower in respect than the WWF, and the Midget Mud Wrestling League.

Mother ers should be fired from top to bottom starting with that face Stern. How the being the league office do you decide to buy and run a ing team?

[++SaiNt TiAg0++]

I don't like the deal from LA from a basketball standpoint.

This is a bigger issue. Seperate your hate for the Lakers from this and imagine a scenario where you gave up say Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili for say Russell Westbrook. Then the league comes in and tell you it is a no go even though both teams wanted to do it and no one else would give anywhere close to that much for Westbrook. Would you find that upsetting?

I think you would.

This had nothing to do with the facts and everything to do with whiny owners like Dan Gilbert (just sell your team already, you have failed) and Mark Cuban (cheats in business, bends the rules) complaining solely because once again the Lakers (a well managed, winning organization) beat everyone to the punch. Fact.

i give you that they had a great situation in order to open the possibilities of this trade however how they got to this point is total bul and you know it. separate our hate??

separate your love and if you cared i would see posts of your outrage following sterns NO transaction quit acting like you give a damn about anything other than L.A thats what you laker fans are pissed at! pathetic attempts to displace your source of aggravation.

put yourself in NO shoes you know they could have at least dumped ONE ty contract on L.A bottom line it's not fair. your bull team and almost every other team conspire against S.A and our resources are the draft and the bucks other than that people dont trade with SA bc of fear of us capitalizing on those trades so welcome to our world

[Obstructed_View]

The Hornets are a ass excuse for a franchise in a terrible market with no ownership, meaning there's nobody looking out financially for the team with their own interests attached. The league should have contracted or relocated them several times, but simply didn't have the balls, fearing the bad publicity. Fortunately they did finally step up and prevent the richest team in the history of the league who just signed a gigantic TV contract from looting what's left of that market's talent and simultaneously unloading crappy contracts of undesirable and unmarketable players to that market. They certainly knew that doing so would have rendered the Hornets completely impossible to sell or to get people to buy tickets to watch for the next dozen years. Anyone with a lick of financial sense that owns an NBA team would have been able to forsee having to fork over their own money to keep that sinking ship afloat for years and years.

The Lakers have a recent history of taking advantage of franchises that are in ownership transition. They simply weren't going to be allowed to do it to a team that's owned by the league. They'll certainly be able to do it again with other teams in the future.

[adidas11]

This whole thing stinks. I was not a fan of this trade, but all teams involved had every right to do the deal. The deal fit within the rules/parameters established by the league, so it had every right to go down.

As others have said, there is a conflict of interest. Dell was told that he full authority to do any deal that he saw fit. But because of the player being traded, and the team the player was going to, many of the owners threw a fit. For the simple reason being that they didn't like the Lakers getting a star player.

And think about it, were the Lakers really improving that much? We would have lost our Sixth Man of the Year, and our All-NBA power forward! And it wasn't like the Hornets were getting screwed...they were getting serviceable players and solid trade pieces to further improve the team down the road. That's a lot better than keeping a disgruntled Chris Paul for 7 more months, only to lose him for nothing in July!!

[Mark in Austin]

From a purely selfish standpoint I'm sad this didn't go down. Paul, Bryant and Bynum is a much better matchup for SA than Bryant, Odom, Gasol, Bynum.

[Obstructed_View]

This whole thing stinks. I was not a fan of this trade, but all teams involved had every right to do the deal. The deal fit within the rules/parameters established by the league, so it had every right to go down.

As others have said, there is a conflict of interest. Dell was told that he full authority to do any deal that he saw fit. But because of the player being traded, and the team the player was going to, many of the owners threw a fit. For the simple reason being that they didn't like the Lakers getting a star player.

And think about it, were the Lakers really improving that much? We would have lost our Sixth Man of the Year, and our All-NBA power forward! And it wasn't like the Hornets were getting screwed...they were getting serviceable players and solid trade pieces to further improve the team down the road. That's a lot better than keeping a disgruntled Chris Paul for 7 more months, only to lose him for nothing in July!!

See bolded part where you just killed your own argument. This is all about what the Hornets were getting back, even if the numbers worked. It's been reported by many that the numbers in fact didn't.

I'd love to see evidence that any trade has ever happened in the NBA without approval by the ownership and the league. In this case, both rejected the trade. Until that happens, let's dispense with this "full authority" lie.

This aborted trade was likely only reported because 90 percent of the people reporting it are Laker fans. Just because a story is leaked about an invalid trade doesn't give the trade legitimacy.

The NBA owners knew they would be on the hook for the ty team that Dell Demps was trying to saddle the Hornets with. Nothing the Hornets got is remotely better than just letting Paul leave next summer from a competetive or a business standpoint.

[smrattler]

The Lakers perform a public raping and get Gasol a few years ago, handing them a trips to the finals in the process, and the NBA does nothing.

Now they are about to get smaller and weaker (at least this step) and the NBA blocks it?

It would have been a lot better if they had let this trade go through and then pull the carpet on the Howard trade proposal that was sure to follow.

[K-State Spur]

This whole thing stinks. I was not a fan of this trade, but all teams involved had every right to do the deal. The deal fit within the rules/parameters established by the league, so it had every right to go down.

As others have said, there is a conflict of interest. Dell was told that he full authority to do any deal that he saw fit. But because of the player being traded, and the team the player was going to, many of the owners threw a fit. For the simple reason being that they didn't like the Lakers getting a star player.

And the owners of the NOH had the right to pull the plug on it. Just because Demps was told something doesn't mean that it is binding. It happens. [As an Orioles fan, I can't tell you how many trades have been orchestrated by the GMs over the years who though they had autonomy only to have Peter Angelos come back and nix it at the last second.]

It's really bad PR, but nothing outside the rules happened.

Make a deal with a team where you only have to deal with 1 owner instead of all 29 and you don't have to worry about this happening...

[SenorSpur]

Stern and the NBA are a ing joke. All of a sudden, they're trying to legislate parity in trade scenarios, but they've allowed the Hornets franchise to flounder in that city for years. In fact, that franchise has been floundering ever since they were allowed to move their from Charlotte. Meanwhile, a viable NBA market in Seattle was literally robbed of their franchise and is now without a team.

As for the trade itself, I hate the Fakers as much as anybody. I don't agree with the manner in which they've tried to take advantage of moribound, cash-strapped franchises by giving them $0.25 on the dollar for their players. However, if the Hornets and the Fakers agreed to do this deal, so be it. The Hornets were never going to be able to keep Paul anyway. At least, the Hornets were getting some good players in return. They're never going to get as good of a deal for Paul again. Now what happens?

[K-State Spur]

As for the trade itself, I hate the Fakers as much as anybody. I don't agree with the manner in which they've tried to take advantage of moribound, cash-strapped franchises by giving them $0.25 on the dollar for their players. However, if the Hornets and the Fakers agreed to do this deal, so be it.

The Hornets did not agree to this deal. Their owners reneged.

[rascal]

I completely agree. This whole situation reeks. Anyone who believes this was a good trade for the Hornets is either a Laker fan or doesn't know anything about the league. And make no mistake Dwight Howard was definitely in the picture(he probably already had his bags packed for LA).

And I don't believe for a second that the league rejected the trade. I think that Stern and the league signed off on this deal and attempted to pull a fast one, but the owners wern't having any part of it. Now they have to save face and make it look like they were the ones who rejected the deal even though in actuality, they would've let this deal go through if the owners didn't say anything.

Agree. You have it all right on how it went down.