Former NBA Commissioner David Stern addressed the NBA’s most famous non-trade during a recent appearance on the Nunyo & Company podcast [hat tip to Dan Feldman of NBC Sports].
The Lakers, Rockets and Hornets [now known as the Pelicans] worked out a three-team trade in 2011 that would have sent Chris Paul to Los Angeles. Stern, acting as owner of the New Orleans franchise after George Shinn sold it to the league, vetoed the deal on the basis that the Hornets weren’t getting enough in return for an All-Star point guard who was just entering his prime.
The full trade would have sent Paul to L.A., Pau Gasol to Houston and Lamar Odom, Kevin Martin, Luis Scola, Goran Dragic and a first-round pick to New Orleans. Stern blocked the deal, but says he intended to rework it.
“In fact, in the course of the weekend, we thought we could re-do the deal,” Stern explained. “We really thought that Houston would be ready to part with [Kyle] Lowry, and we had a trade lined up for Odom that would have gotten us a good first-round draft pick – not we, but my basketball folks. But [Lakers GM] Mitch Kupchak at the time panicked and moved Odom to Dallas. So the piece wasn’t even there for us to play with at the time. So that was it — just about what was good for the then-New Orleans Hornets.”
Later that year, New Orleans dealt Paul to the Clippers in exchange for Al-Farouq Aminu, Eric Gordon, Chris Kaman and a 2012 first-round pick that became Austin Rivers. The Lakers lost a potential star to pair with Kobe Bryant for the final part of his career and haven’t been a title contender since.
David Stern enjoys the company of men
David Stern is a flat out liar. Cuban and Gilbert got on the phone after the lockout and cried the lakers got Cp3 and you guys put it out in to the media that Paul couldn’t go to a big market but somehow the clippers in LA is not the LA market. just admit you screwed us over, have some balls
You ain’t got a clue. Stick to fantasy ball.
I forgotten more basketball then you’ll ever know, run along to momma now dumbass
odom wasn’t traded instantly, there was time David, we all know it was you
What a POS liar. He blocked it because owners especially Mark Cuban were complaint that the Lakers were getting even better and they knew the lakers would then turn around and try to get Howard and nobody wanted another super star team for the lakers. They kept saying that it went against the new bargaining agreement of big market teams getting bigger and better and little market teams getting left in the dust. I can’t stand that guy and his lies and Mark Cuban can kick rocks as well. Morons.
I completely agree.
Stern refused the lakers to get Paul. I’ve never seen a commish basically veto a trade himself ever. Salaries and both teams agreed to it.
Exactly! I’ve never seen anything like that before. All because Owen s cried about it especially that little whiner Mark Cuban lol. I’m glad Stern isn’t running the show still. If he was he’d probably block a PG13 trade for the Lakers if they tried to make one lol. Probably not but wouldn’t shock me because the guy clearly had some motive behind that other blocked trade. What really blows my mind is that it really was a good trade for all teams involved! That blocked trade sent that team into a spiral. They had no choice but to trade Odom after that because he was so heart broken and that was it. It just went down hill after that for the Lakers and for Odom.
Mark Cuban stated he was against the trade due to the fact thw CBA at the the time was brand new and was meant to prevent superteams (funny now in hindsight). He had nothing to do with it being vetoed and had stated how unhappy he was with Stern for thhe way he handled it. The honus falls completely on Stern’s administration and Cuban is a top 5 owner in the league. Regardless the Lakers got screwed
You ain’t got a clue.
spence just a troll
Ironically, on the whole, the pieces in the deal that was turned down became better than the pieces actually accepted.
Yup. I agree. The trade was a good trade for all parties involved and he blocked it. Makes no sense.
All good as long as the Lakers suck.
if they only had the balls to admit that
-Life and Weather are not Fair-
Or
-East Coast vs West Coast-
Paul Pierce, Scottie Pippin and Ramona Shelburne. Two classic Laker HATERZ, ALL ESPN EMPLOYEE STOOGES/FOILS explaining to Lakers fans on video the Stern steal, seriously?!?
Complete slap in the face West Coast Sports Fans, wake up and take your balls back, because Your passion has been hijacked and rerouted by and to the East Coast organized crime syndicate.
Here’s the shkoop, about the same time this illegally resended trade destroyed lives and sabotaged the NBA’s Western Division to shake up and balance the power, the Lakers were forced to do a deal with the mega-amalgam Hartford Courant Media Group.
After the Disney Corporation moved in, the plan to transform the SoCal sports scene into the East Coast sports scene was already in full covert swing, and the West Coast sports business, it’s agents, owners and franchises like the Dodgers and a certain Magic Johnson took rightful exception to that.
Overnight, SoCal sports personalities and writers went from reporting, discussing and writing about what SoCal sports fans want to hear and talk about, to the new agenda the stations were now being told by their East Coast crime Bosses to start reporting.
That agenda? Report world and national sports (this greatly benefits the West Coast internet gambling ring, also run by the mob) first and more, while downplaying the West Coast and local sports scene.
Local radio stations stopped taking on air callers, and justifiably phased those popular segments totally out by only airing the purposefully screened and chosen lunatics, while station managers, producers, long time employees, were all given the ultimatum memo, I know, I was there and received one. And after many loyal Southern Californian sports fans suffering great despondency left these stations and positions, the East Coasters filled their spots with a sick zeal and an evil quickness.
Politics, Religion, War, and Fake War (SPORTS), are the biggest money makers on the planet run by the exact same people running the exact same fools (us), and I used to work for them.
The West Coast and California has a MASSIVE population base yes, but it is confused by and for the East Coast and their horrific weather, long Winters, and a no-man’s-land time zone.
This makes for a jonesing, angry, depressed, hung over, cabin fevered zombie sloth of a sports fanatic at the water cooler each morning, raging why free agents who grew up in the West are all going back home to the West for less money, better weather and an ubundance of greater opportunities, while the East #SUX yet again!!
Never mind getting other hobbies, or enrolling in therapy, or moving, no, just place all the major sports franchises into one, major Northern East Coast city, some only a few blocks away from one another, the commissions, commissioners and rules commitees too, and then put a conglomerate sports media franchise in another adjacent Eastern seaboard neighboring state, and colude to rig drafts and strong arm free agents to stay in their small, crap weather markets, Sopranos anyone???
Conversely, the Western Region of the United States and California and Texas in particular, sends more professional athletes to the NFL, NBA, MLB, and the Olympics than does any other locality on earth.
The West, and in this specific case California, has year around Mediterranean like weather, the most varied topography in the country, a calm and gorgeous ocean, majestic running coast line, snow capped mountains, lush green and floral valleys, rolling dunes and deserts, and all within 2 hours away or less.
This provides endless year around optimal indoor/outdoor activity and TiVo options for it’s residents and their families that most citizens of the world just don’t have, and in fact, cannot possibly conceive.
Californians have choices that choice land, weather, and the life enriching opportunities that come with those provide, and we KNOW it. It’s why the Rams, the team the NFL after over 20 years blatantly against our votes defiantly rail-roaded down our throats, will again leave the state and move to yet a sixth city, and the Chargers will move back down to San Diego, because savvy SoCal wants Back ALL their free network NFL games to TiVo while we surf and ski all day away from the unneeded and unwanted congestion.
The main thing is this, The NBA illegally resended a trade 24 hours after it was agreed upon and reported in the news, and the damaging social and psychological reprucussions of pissing in the pool were known by the league and purposefully implemented anyway.
How many of you would go back in rather awkwardly binding shackles, to a work place and that environment afterwards, knowing that you are no longer needed or wanted there by them???
Sterno, as we called him at the time because of how badly he burned the Western Division, and his fellow crooked coward cronies in the East, because Mitch Kupchack is not here to tell his side, and because the NBA er, uh, mob recently got wind of a tell-all biopic on this whole long post about to splash down hard across the nation, adversely affecting the crime syndicate and all of sports everywhere, they wanted to engage in as much pre-dawn damage control as possible.
The aftermath of that inhuman travesty forced a proud and successful franchise, family and GM to resort to very unfamiliar tactics to survive the rocking devastation from that salvo kill shot.
Tanking/questionable business practices were the only way to get back to relevency, and the cost was great.
Mitch, Jim, Byron, and many other die hard life long Lakers too, all knowingly and rather graciously fell hard on Laker swords for the fan base, and we owe them BIG.
Wounds will heal and relationships will be mended, and the Laker family of former, current and future personnel will remain together and close, because of love and respect and because collectively they have been together through worse.
So there you have it Laker fans, the West (please bring back Jerry, STILL technically the greatest Laker of all time) Hollywood, and big business sports and their law firms here in California know the game and the score, and Magic and Polanka are about to even it. BOOOOM!!
And the jello is jigglin’, run with it homies…
Not sure if anyone Noticed, but the completion of this trade would’ve meant no Harden in Houston because of KMart in this deal
A lot of interesting what ifs when one looks at this. What precluded this is, the NBA wanted the Clippers tp move to LA to fracture the Lakers fan base and then this, and that is what set up the whole shocking fiasco that illegally unfolded.