Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
Result of trade request: Traded from New Orleans to LA Clippers
Just ahead of the 2010-11 trade deadline, Chris Paul had his agent tell the then-New Orleans Hornets that he would not be signing a contract extension and wanted to be traded to the Knicks.
Less than two weeks later, Paul was on a new team – but it wasn’t the Knicks. It would be the Los Angeles Clippers, although how Paul wound up playing for the lesser of the two Los Angeles basketball brands was a bit of a mess.
That’s because, at the time, then-NBA commissioner David Stern was acting as the defacto owner of the Hornets as the team had an ownership sale by George Shinn fall through, making a trade for an asset as valuable as Paul quite tricky.
One week after Paul’s trade request went public, reports surfaced that the Lakers had pulled off a blockbuster three-team trade with the Rockets to land Paul:
Here is the complete breakdown of the trade as it is currently structured: Los Angeles Lakers: PG Chris Paul (from NO Hornets). New Orleans Hornets: F Lamar Odom (from LA Lakers), SG Kevin Martin (from HOU Rockets), PF Luis Scola (from HOU Rockets), PG Goran Dragic (from HOU Rockets). Houston Rockets: PF Pau Gasol (from LA Lakers). There will also be draft picks exchanged in the final proposal, but those will be finalized when the transactions can officially be made beginning Friday at 2 p.m. ET. The draft picks involved will be dealt to the New Orleans Hornets. Those picks will be a future first- and second-round pick, according to David Aldridge.
It looked like the Lakers had made a major move to land the best point guard in the league to pair with Kobe Bryant in the same backcourt.
That is, until Stern stepped in and vetoed the trade, in part because he felt the Hornets could do better in a potential Paul deal. However, Stu Jackson, who was then the NBA executive vice president of basketball operations, believed differently:
Jackson: “David made some comment that the reason he vetoed the trade was because it wasn’t an attractive enough package for a player of Chris Paul’s caliber. That was only a half-truth. The other part was that he also felt that he wanted the Hornets to be an attractive property to a prospective owner.”
Eventually, the Clippers swooped in with an offer of Eric Gordon, Chris Kaman, Al-Farouq Aminu and a first-round pick that eventually became Austin Rivers to land Paul.
Needless to say, that’s a worse package than what the Hornets would have gotten from the Lakers and Rockets, but that’s neither here nor there.
It’s curious to think about how NBA history might have changed had Paul ended up with the Lakers in 2011-12, as he nearly did. That was the lockout-shortened season that saw the purple-and-gold finish 41-25. How much would Paul have helped improve upon that?
Sure, they would have lost Lamar Odom and Pau Gasol, but they still would have had a starting lineup of Paul, Bryant, Matt Barnes, Metta World Peace and Andrew Bynum. It’s possible that lineup could have paved the way for an L.A. trip to the Finals, where the Lakers would have met the LeBron-Dwyane Wade–Chris Bosh era Heat, a surefire television ratings bonanza.
A late-prime Kobe vs. peak LeBron showdown in the Finals? It hurts to think about how fun that would have been.
Oh, well.
