NBA Won’t Let Chris Paul Trade Deal Happen

Sources close to NBA trade rumors have revealed that NBA commissioner David Stern has terminated the possibility of sending Chris Paul to the Los Angeles Lakers from the NBA owned New Orleans Hornets.

The move to end the trade came at the urging of several NBA owners who urged Stern to nullify the plan while keeping Paul on the teams roster for the “foreseeable future.”

Stopping the trade from an owners stance made sense since they have largely seen the five-month lockout as a way to stop big-market teams from leveraging small-market star players as they are pending free agency.

Speaking to Yahoo! Sports a league source revealed:

“The owners half-pushed this, and Stern took it the rest of the way,” and “In the end, David didn’t like that the players were dictating where they wanted to go, like Carmelo [Anthony] had, and he wasn’t going to let Chris Paul dictate where he wanted to go.”

The move by Stern to intervene came just after the Lakers reached an agreement with Paul that included a three-team trade that would have cost the Lakers both Lamar Odom and Pau Gasol.

As part of the rumored deal Gasol would have headed to the Rockets, the Hornets would have received Odom, Rockets guards Kevin Martinand Goran Dragic and forward Luis Scola. Houston was also expected to send a 2012 first-round pick to New Orleans as part of the deal.

The move is particularly bad for Paul who had placed the Los Angeles Lakers at the top of his preferred destinations list.

Do you believe the NBA should have allowed the Chris Paul trade to move forward as planned?