All this “proves” is the Lakers were in the right place at the right time, that’s all. And I understand that. But the Lakers and Celtics have had more than their fair share of superstars. Enough to continue to keep them both competitive in general.
Chris Paul to the Clippers was a riot. First, all the sport pundits were saying what a great trade it was and how Sterling couldn’t even screw it up. They were also saying how this would be “good for the league to have two viable franchises in LA”. That’s the kind of crap that drives me crazy. Stern vetos a trade to the Lakers, and the OK’s a trade to the Clippers… until the Hornets backed out on the Clipper deal.
The NBA is a mess. How can the NBA owners manage a team without having a sniff of impropriety when they try to trade their only asset?
I do agree with you and Marley, though. Just because it looks bad doesn’t mean it is.
So, if all this is my imagination, WTF is Stern actually doing? First, how did the first CP3 trade go through if the league owns N.O.? Who is making trade decisions? And wouldn’t that be run by Stern before everyone agreed to it? I assume so. So the three teams make a deal, loud public static ensues, and Stern then, out of nowhere, vetos the trade that presumably he gave his blessing to before it was announced.
I give up. It’s not my league, it’s not my passion. And the truth is, I won’t lose sleep over it if the Lakers and Celtics make the conference finals this year.
It didn’t go through. The respective sides told the press who was involved in the deal, but it wasn’t approved.
I think that before this, people were under the impression that the Hornets basketball people (Demps and Sperling) were making the basketball decisions and Stern was staying out of it. They seemed to have reached a deal everybody was satisfied with. If it were another franchise, the owner would probably have a say at that point - once they’ve agreed on terms, they confirm the owner approves. But I don’t know how those discussions usually work. In any case, the Clippers trade could still happen. It sounds like both sides want to make it happen and they are just haggling over the price.
The local radio talking heads yesterday said David Stern will soon have a lawsuit on his hands because he is pretty much costing Chris Paul money. If Paul were traded now, he could re-sign for more money than what he’ll get as a free agent after the season.
Nothing he has done is against the rules, I highly doubt Paul has any recourse here. What Stern is doing is trying to keep the value of the Hornets up so it’s worth buying. They should’ve taken the Clippers deal though, no team can really match that. As far as the Lakers and Kobe go they took a huge gamble and won, if Kobe had been a clear cut superstar he wouldn’t have been available at 13th.
Well he fucked that up. In the past year the Pistons, Nets, Warriors, 76ers and Hawks were all sold. NO hasn’t received a bid. I don’t think the NBA will get what they paid for it if they can’t sell this year.
David West is gone. Chris Paul will be. Team value has already sunk. What could a new owner do to persuade CP3 to stay?
So is he personally going to reject every trade he considers unfavorable according to no published standard, or is trading for the Hornets just going to be a huge headache until someone buys the team? Right now it sounds like it’s the second one. The Nuggets and Jazz did pretty well when they traded Carmelo Anthony and Deron Williams last year. When you trade away a player like that, you’re not going to get an equally good player in return because that’s usually not what the trade is about. You’re usually trying to lay the groundwork for rebuilding the team.
Another theory out there is that someone is very close to buying the Hornets but they need control of Chris Paul to make it happen. The Hornets are much less attractive to a potential buyer without Paul. Even if they got decent talent-for-talent value, Paul still brings in more money with jersey sales and viewership drawing power.
If for some reason this were true, the team would just say they’re not trading him. In point of fact, the league is apparently negotiating with the Clippers and he’ll probably get traded to one team or another within a few days. He won’t be there when the season starts. Anyway, an owner who thinks that way would be very shortsighted. I hope the league wouldn’t sell to someone so stupid he’d let Chris Paul leave in free agency and get nothing in return because he’d rather get a little extra revenue from sales of the jersey of a player who has announced he’s leaving the team next season. Anybody who wants to buy the Hornets knows they’re getting a team without Chris Paul.
Paul is gone, specially after this fiasco. Nobody is going to buy that team on the strength of having Chris Paul, anyone with even cursory knowledge of the NBA knows he won’t be a Hornet after his contract is over under any circumstance. What the league wanted was a young team with draft options and not an over the hill middle of the road team with bloated contracts.
At least the new ownership could decide in which direction they wanted to go with the rebuilding effort, be it total meltdown and stockpiling draft picks, or an attempt to rebuild on the fly by trading for veterans.
To stick them with one plan or the other right before they purchase the team is pretty unfair and unappealing to prospective ownership groups.
well, at this point it looks like my Lakers got jobbed. We were just short of horsepower last yr, and now we’ve lost the 6th Man of the Year for a middling draft pick. I was a little surprised Odom took it so personally, I’d always had the impression he had his head screwed on pretty good for an athlete…
Chris Paul is the biggest asset the Hornets have right now. Would the value of the team not decrease without him? I could see an owner wanting control of that asset. I don’t think they’d be able to re-sign him, but if I were an owner I’d at least want my people making the decisions on how it’s handled and what we get in return. This deal doesn’t have to go down this week. They could wait, like the Nuggets did, until mid-season when some team decides they’re a PG away from a serious run in the playoffs and overpays big time.
If you’re buying the team, you know he’s leaving. He can opt out of his contract and he’s already made it clear he’s going to do that if they don’t trade him. What’s a new owner going to do to fix that? They only have a couple of players under contract and they have very little to trade. They don’t have anything that’s going to turn them into a team that can challenge Dallas or the better teams in the conference.
That’s not what the Nuggets did. They were trying to convince Carmelo Anthony to stick around and traded him when it became impossible. At this point, it seems like the league has gotten the best offers it’s going to get. There are a limited number of teams that can trade for him (the number appears to be two) and only so many trade combinations.
If you believe you’re a point guard away from a serious playoff run, you can’t trade away half your team to get that point guard. Since Paul only wants to go to a couple of teams, I don’t see how anybody offers more than the Lakers and Clippers have offered.
The trade deadline is some time mid March, after that their only hope would be a sign and trade at the end of the season. The Nuggets didn’t have to deal with a lockout shortened season. Besides there isn’t a buyer at this point, trying to get everything done in time just so they can get the same exact offers the league is doing now seems a bit pointless.
I’m just going by the quotes in the articles that he doesn’t want players dictating where they’re traded. Stu Jackson used to be a GM and he’s one of the guys in charge now. So maybe things get saner but they are asking the LAC’s for the company store.
Phil Jackson actually predicted the mess Stern caused.
Which is understandable, but this is the worst possible way to handle it.
Jackson was a lousy GM, and the Clippers say they are not going to trade everything they have (sans Blake Griffin) for Paul. That would be treading water at best, and probably not even that. The Clippers seem to have agreed to trade Aminu, Bledsoe, Kaman,. The problem seems to be that the NBA wants the Clippers to include both Eric Gordon and the Minnesota draft pick, and the Clippers are saying that’s just too much. They might trade Gordon or the pick, but not both. Just a few months ago, the Clippers traded away a draft pick that ended up being #1 overall and they sure as hell don’t want to do THAT again.
I’m trying to just ignore all the leaks and proposed deals and other nonsense until Paul actually gets traded. This isn’t going to get dragged out for months because it looks like it’s the Lakers or Clippers or nothing.
The teams have agreed on a deal again: Clippers get Paul and two second-round picks, Hornets get Gordon, Aminu, Kaman, and the Minnesota first-round pick. That’s assuming David Stern doesn’t intervene or the Supreme Court doesn’t issue an injection or some other absurd thing.
