Trade involving Chris Paul and Lamar Odom shut down by Commissioner
As three National Basketball Association teams attempted to pull off a multi-player trade, the NBA, spearheaded by Commissioner David Stern, shut it down.
In a complicated deal, the New Orleans Hornets were sending Chris Paul to the Los Angeles Lakers, who in turn were sending Lamar Odom to the Hornets and Pau Gasol to the Houston Rockets. Houston would then send Luis Scola, Kevin Martin, Goran Dragic and draft picks to the Hornets.
The NBA quickly ended the deal by refusing to approve the trades. An NBA spokesperson told Yahoo that owners “didn’t kill the deal.” It was killed for “basketball reasons.”
Whatever the cause, it has left many players in a state of instability as they report for training camp Friday.
Odom said to the Los Angeles Times, “I guess that means I’m a Laker if the trade didn’t go through. I don’t know what to do for the Lakers. I’m even weirded out by the league for doing what they did. I don’t know what to do.”
Odom said he was surprised by the trade, saying that he thought it was “a lie” when he first heard about it.
After it was announced that the deal was off, Paul tweeted, “WoW.”
Dan Gilbert of the Cleveland Cavaliers was among team owners who pushed Stern to shut down the deal. Gilbert called the proposed trade a “travesty” in an e-mail to Stern and urged that it be put to a vote by the league’s 29 owners. Business Week reports.
The NBA’s 66-game season begins Dec. 25.
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