Tomorrow is opening day of the NBA signing season, and teams are doing informal agreements leading up to the formalization day on Friday.
The blockbuster of the night was the proposed trade sending Chris Paul to the Lakers in a three-way with Houston and New Orleans. Pau Gasol would be heading to the Rockets, while Kevlin Martin, Luis Scola, Goran Dragic and Lamar Odom and a Knicks 2012 number one would be heading to the Big Easy.
With Paul slated to be a free agent after this season, getting a starting 2, 3 and 4 along with a serviceable backup point guard and a #1 is a fairly good haul for the Hornets. With only six players under contract, getting four people back for one actually works. Jarrett Jack and K-Mart in the backcourt, Odom and Scola along side Okafor upfront with Ariza as your first forward off the bench (or start Ariza and let Odom reprise his Laker role as super-sub) is a playoff-level rotation. I don't see the Hornets getting hosed here; let's hope young Ms. Kardashian likes gumbo.
The Lakers went from being loaded on the front-line to being somewhat barren, relying on Andrew Bynum to stay healthy and anchor the middle and to have either Luke Walton or Metta World Piece (ne Ron Artest) be up to form. However, with an All-Star backcourt, you can afford to have a hole in the middle, since you could be getting 50 points a game from the starting backcourt.
Houston seems to be getting the short end of the stick at first glance. Patrick Patterson might be ready to fill in for Scola at PF, but this seems to be the prelude to another signing in the near term, since Houston lowered their payroll by quite a bit here.
The kicker here is that New Orleans is owned by the NBA; some owners in town for the finalizing of the new CBA are protesting and want commissioner Stern to stop the trade. If Paul is being allocated to the big-market Lakers at the detriment of the Hornets, that could be a valid beef.
If the league owned Houston, I'd be concerned. Houston seems to be doing a salary dump, but the deal seems plausible for New Orleans. There isn't a lot of star power in the players the Hornets are getting outside of Odom, who married into a reality show and anchored the national team last summer in winning the World Championship and giving the US team the summer off from any must-win action. Scola is more of a lunch-bucket pro and while Martin can score 20 for you, he doesn't seem to be the second coming of Kobe.
It will be interesting to see if this trade stands. A lot of owners are ticked at not getting Paul, but he was likely to go to a major-market team if left to his own devices; he wasn't likely to end up in Indiana or Charlotte.
[Update 115AM Friday-It looks like the trade has been vetoed by Stern. Exactly why would be a good question to ask. Is it the Houston salary dump? Or is it the Mamba-CP3 package in LA just too scary for the rest of the league?]
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