It’s been a bizarre week for Los Angeles Lakers fans. After the announcement last Thursday that Chris Paul would be headed to the Lakers it seemed inevitable that the team was securing its future for the next few years. However, after the vetoing of the trade later that evening the Lakers have been in a free-falling downward spiral.
The worst blow came Wednesday evening with the news that Chris Paul had been traded to the Lakers’ cross-hall rivals, the Los Angeles Clippers. The acceptance of this trade by the NBA and the rest of the owners of the Hornets came as a punch in the gut to the Lakers and their fans.
Now, I’m not going to sit here and ask for pity from the rest of the league. There’s no question that the Lakers have experience more than their fair share of success. In the past decade the team has won five NBA championships, which is more than than any other team in the league (besides the Boston Celtics and Chicago Bulls) has won in their entire existence.
Still, the precedent that the league set by vetoing the original Chris Paul trade was alarming. But, after Paul’s trade to the Clippers was met with league wide approval it showed the true nature of the owners currently running the New Orleans Hornets.
After the Lakers acquired Paul last week it was met with uproar from some of the small market owners. While Dan Gilbert was the most notable whiner of them all, there’s no doubt that others disapproved of the trade as well. These owners falsely played the tune of league parity and competitive balance, when they were ultimately doing whatever they could to help their own team succeed in the long run.
These owners need to take a step back and look into the mirror. The claim that they want what is best for the league and for the Hornets is laughable. Their priorities lie with their own teams, and have nothing to do with the Hornets or competitive balance in the league as a whole.
Owners like Gilbert, who purchased the Cleveland Cavaliers back in 2005, refuse to accept responsibility for the fact that their franchises are inept. While it’s obvious that bigger markets are going to have certain advantages that smaller ones don’t, it doesn’t necessarily prevent a team from succeeding.
If you want an example of this simply look at the San Antonio Spurs. San Antonio is one of the lower markets in the NBA, yet managed to control the Western Conference (along with the Lakers) for the last decade. They established this reputation and maintained it by making successful basketball decisions, not by having movie studios down the street from their gym.
What owners like Gilbert refuse to do is accept responsibility for the boneheaded decisions they have made, and look at an excuse like market size to try and explain why their team is consistently in the cellar of the standings. If the role was reversed, and Gilbert was the one signing a major free agent to play for his Cavaliers, there would be no controversy. No letters written in childish fonts.
How do I know? Because Gilbert has behaved in a similar manner before. Before his team tried and failed to keep the best player they’ve ever had, LeBron James, to re-sign, Gilbert reaped the benefits of having a major superstar. But, his inability to hire a talented general manager that could put pieces around James is what ultimately doomed his franchise to another decade of iniquity.
Another small market owner, Michael Jordan of the Charlotte Bobcats, also expressed his displeasure in the original Chris Paul deal. But Jordan also admitted that if given the chance to bring Paul to Charlotte to play for the Bobcats, he would jump on the opportunity.
Of course he would. Any owner would.
Next Page: Owners Hypocrisy Stings Lakers
Actions like these are what make it so painfully obvious that the league’s ownership of the Hornets is turning into an absolute farce. But unfortunately that isn’t even the most damning piece of evidence.
Once Paul was traded to the Clippers, a perennial loser, there was no backlash. There were no letters written from bitter, unsuccessful owners. There wasn’t a league wide petition to veto the trade and keep Paul hanging in his version of basketball purgatory.
Why?
Because the Clippers aren’t the Lakers. The Clippers have been the league’s laugh track for decades. It’s not just that the team wasn’t successful, it’s that they were painfully dreadful. As prestigious as the Lakers franchise is, the Clippers are the exact opposite.
These owners see Chris Paul traded to a team like the Clippers and immediately assume it won’t hurt them. They don’t have a history of winning, so what does it hurt?
Over the last week the NBA has mirrored professional wrestling more than a legitimate sports association. David Stern’s ego and senility are rapidly inserting themselves into places they don’t belong. Even though the league has the right to negotiate a good trade for the Hornets, it never should have gotten this far in the first place. The inability to find an owner for a team is the responsibility of the league.
The bottom line is that each owner is going to look out for the well being of their own franchise. They don’t care about how successful the Hornets are, and they certainly don’t care if the Hornets get enough value in return for a player that was going to bolt for free agent waters at the end of the season anyways. Each owner is looking out for himself. And it will always be that way.
It would be unrealistic to ask the owners to put aside their glaring conflicts of interest and try and make a deal that would make the Hornets better. But hiding behind the guise of league parity and pretending that is the primary goal is utterly ridiculous. As fans of the league each one of you should be insulted that these owners are trying to shovel loads of nonsense into your mouths.
The approved trade that sent Chris Paul to the Clippers only proves my point. Where was the uproar? Where was David Stern’s apparent motives that declared he refused to let players dictate their way to a bigger market. That argument is perhaps the most flawed of them all when you consider that just six days later Paul ended up in the exact same market he would have been in the first place.
If the league wants to unload barrels of excuses onto the fans like piles of manure the least they could do is try and keep their story straight. Even though the deal New Orleans received from the Clippers was stronger than the one they got from the Lakers, all their excuses for vetoing the trade in the first place are nothing but heaping mounds of drivel.
Now, I’m certainly not one for conspiracy theories. I like to believe what I’m told. But when what I’m told is immediately contradicted less than a week later it becomes hard to accept that I’m being told the truth. Even though the Hornets got a better deal than they would have from the Lakers, the lies and deceit the NBA and its owners are cowering under is enough to make any stomach churn.
The bottom line, Los Angeles, is that you got hosed.