News broke on Twitter from Yahoo's Adrian Wojnarowski at around 7:00 PM EST on December 8 that Chris Paul was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers for Lamar Odom and Pau Gasol. ESPN's Marc Stein then reported that minutes later, Gasol would be traded to the Houston Rockets from the New Orleans Hornets in exchange for Luis Scola, Kevin Martin, Goran Dragic, and 2 draft picks.
Being from LA, my first reaction was, "Oh my God, we just got one of the best point guards of all-time!" and then "Oh crap, Derrick Caracter is now the starting power forward with a center who has knee problems and did this the last time we saw him, a shooting guard who went to Germany to get some semi-illegal blood transfusion to help his knees, and point guard who had knee surgery. And Luke Walton is still on the team. This is not what I thought would happen..."
If I were a New Orleans fan this is how I would have reacted: "We just gave up our only superstar we have ever had, our life as a franchise is over...wait who did we get from Houston?! A very good low post player to go with Okafor and now Odom! A shooting guard that averaged 23.5 points per game last year! Two draft picks! THIS GUY! Shhh....don't tell anyone but we secretly got the best deal."
And lastly if I were a Rockets fan, "We are so f!*#ed."
A Twitgasm occurred. Everyone and their mother starting talking about not if the Lakers would win the championship this year, but how many they would win (kind of hypocritical if you ask me because all Laker fans were hating on LeBron for his "Not three, not four, not five" speech). Then Dwight Howard's name got thrown into the mix and the train kept on rolling. "Howard for Bynum" was brought up too many times to count, which would be the single worst trade for the Magic, but everyone was blinded by the shock of acquiring Chris Paul to take a step back to realize this.
Then....BAM!!!!
The equivalent of the apocalypse happened.
Reports started to leak out that the NBA and David Stern vetoed the trade.
I could not find the words in the situation to even formulate a sentence to express what my feelings were. We just went from a blockbuster trade that we knew was going to happen except for the where part, to "I think I am witnessing the downfall of an entire sports organization."
First of all, let's just start with the Hornets themselves. How is it in any way shape or form ethical for all NBA owners, who own and have interests in their own teams, own and have power for another team? There isn't really an analogy to describe this scenario because it just never happens! The NBA put in GM Dell Demps in New Orleans to do what a general manager is supposed to do; make the team better. Because that is the goal of any professional sports team right? Not in the case of the NBA apparently. The Hornets got the best deal that they could possibly get for a guy that was going to leave them anyways at the end of the year and get nothing in return.
The owners of small-market teams threw bitch fits to Stern complaining about losing another superstar to a big market, especially Dan Gilbert, who's email to Stern has now gone public. Hey Dan, you mad bro? Don't be so sour because you own an NBA team that resides in a city that no basketball player wants to play for and live in. Remember, you still own a frickin' NBA team!
So Stern decided to side with these owners and veto the trade "for basketball reasons." You just had the best season in recent memory and this would have made this season that much better even after everyone already forgot about the lockout. But no. This is MUCH worse than the lockout in my opinion and I don't think it's close. The lockout was about a business and it's money, which even though seemed bad, is defensible. What this veto is though is an unethical act of corruption and collusion, factors that you can never defend to the public. You cannot save face after this unless the deal goes through to the Lakers. If it doesn't? Then Paul cannot be traded to another team or else the NBA just wants to implode on itself.
So yes Chris, "WoW" should be your response to your unfortunate situation. But not because you will not be joining Kobe in sunny California. It should be your response because the NBA will never be viewed as a legitimate organization again.
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