The Chris Paul Trade was Gonna KILL the Lakers!

This week’s attempted trade between the Houston Rockets, New Orleans Hornets, and LA Lakers almost became one of the most lop-sided trades I’ve ever seen. As a Kings fan, I’m sad to see the NBA block it.

The Lakers were about to sell their future and the Hornets almost became contenders. But the NBA blocked it because David Stern doesn’t want the big stars to join together in big markets and kill the small market teams. I COMPLETELY AGREE with Stern’s thinking, but unfortunately, he didn’t do his homework on these “big stars”.

New Orleans would’ve received …

Kevin Martin: 23.5 ppg

Lamar Odom: 14.4 ppg

Luis Scola: 18.3 ppg

Two 1^st-round picks

The Hornets were about to receive potentially 53 points per game in exchange for Chris Paul’s 16 points, plus two first round picks that could potentially become superstars.

“But CP3 racks up the assists!” says the smarty-pants in the back of the classroom.

Paul’s 10 dimes a game make him worth about 36 points per game total, still much less than Scola/Martin/Odom combined. Just to be fair, let’s add in Scola/Martin/Odom’s assists, which total 8 per game. Now the Hornets were potentially receiving 69 points per game in exchange for Paul’s 36.

Imagine the Hornets’ starting lineup:

C Emeka Okefor

PF David West

SF Luis Scola

SG Kevin Martin

PG WHO CARES?!?!

Bench Lamar Odom

Bench Trevor Ariza

That’s a solid team primed for a playoff run. And the Lakers? Ha! Who would they have?

C Andrew Bynum (always injured and underachieveing)

PF ???

SF Metta World Peace

SG Kobe Bryant

PG Chris Paul

Other than Kobe, who can CP3 pass the rock to?

Another question: when was the last time a stellar superstar backcourt, with nothing else, led a team to an NBA Championship? You’d have to look back further than 20 years ago when the Pistons’ duo of Joe Dumars and Isaiah Thomas ran the show. Could it work now? In my opinion, no.

This trade would have killed the Lakers. Great point guards flood the Western Conference. Chris Paul isn’t much better, if at all, than Steve Nash, Tyreke Evans, Devin Harris, Tony Parker, Ty Lawson, Russell Westbrook, Jason Kidd, Mike Conley, etc. Shoot, he ain’t much better than the Lakers’ current PG Derek Fisher!

And to get Paul, the Lakers were giving up their second and third best players! Heck yeah! Let ‘em shoot themselves in the foot!

The only way Stern could reasonably block this trade was to prevent LA from becoming more attractive to free agent center Dwight Howard. The NBA can block trades, but not free agent signings. David Stern can’t tell Dwight “Hey, you can’t take a paycut to play with your friends and win a championship!”

Stern would not be able to block Dwight Howard from signing with the Kobe-Paul Lakers, so he’s blocking the Kobe-Paul Lakers from existing. Makes sense.