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Teams appeal Chris Paul ruling
The three teams involved in the Chris Paul trade blocked Thursday by NBA commissioner David Stern are appealing to the league for Stern to reverse the decision, according to sources close to the process.
There is no indication yet that Stern is prepared to reverse course after taking the dramatic step of blocking the league-owned New Orleans Hornets' decision to deal Paul to the Los Angeles Lakers.
Stern told Bloomberg News on Friday it was determined to keep Paul in New Orleans because it was "more valuable than the trade that was being discussed."
"I don't want to speak on the basketball side, but that particular one was weighed against Chris Paul's continued presence in New Orleans," Stern said in New York at the NBA's offices.
NBA spokesman Tim Frank said Thursday the deal was blocked for "basketball reasons." The league owns the Hornets and is trying to sell the club.
But the primary argument being presented to the league office for allowing the deal to go through -- as agreed to in principle by the Hornets, Lakers and Houston Rockets -- is that the NBA's decision would appear to force the Hornets to keep Paul for the rest of the season, despite the fact that he can opt out of his contract and become a free agent July 1 and leave New Orleans without compensation.
A trade of Paul elsewhere, according to the teams' argument, would mean that Stern and the league are choosing where Paul would play.
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 season 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 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.
In an email to Stern obtained by Yahoo! Sports, The New York Times and Cleveland Plain Dealer, 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.
Numerous sources close to the process expressed skepticism that the deal has a chance of being revived, amid a growing sense the league is now determined to keep Paul in New Orleans for an unspecified length of time -- perhaps even for the entire season -- to support the notion that lockout wasn't for naught and that the new labor deal has improved small-market teams' ability to retain star players.
The problem there, of course, is that the Hornets -- thinking they had avoided the drama that engulfed the Denver Nuggets for months last season until they finally traded Carmelo Anthony -- are left with a disgruntled star who can still opt out of his contract and leave the franchise with nothing as of July 1, 2012. Stern's decision to block the deal has likewise raised the question of whether New Orleans can trade Paul anywhere until a new buyer for the team is found, since any deal that does go through could create the appearance that Stern hand-picked the destination.
Odom said the league's action left him disoriented.
"I don't know what to do for the Lakers," Odom told the Los Angeles Times. "I'm even weirded out by the league doing what they did. I don't know what to do."
A "somber" Odom told the newspaper he thought it was a lie when he was first told about the trade to the Hornets.
"And then it doesn't go through," Odom said. "Oh, lord. I don't know what I'm going to do. I'll pray about it."
Odom also said he felt bad for Gasol.
"Imagine how Pau feels," Odom told the Times. "Pau came to the Lakers and played here for four years, went to the Finals and lost, won two NBA championships and then got swept [by the Mavericks this year]. Wow! Imagine how he must feel.
"Man, I'm just in total disbelief about all of this," Odom added. "They don't want my services, for whatever reason. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I was proud to be a Laker, so I'll try to help them in the process as much as possible."
Source: AP