2011 NBA Free Agency

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Go to the Blazers, ruin your knees.

Also, is that bulljive in New Orleans really better than a team in KeyArena? Stern through the 80s and 90s was pretty great. In the 2000s and beyond? Not so much.

[evanmaldonado]

Go to the Blazers, ruin your knees.

Also, is that bulljive in New Orleans really better than a team in KeyArena? Stern through the 80s and 90s was pretty great. In the 2000s and beyond? Not so much.

At least Oden's trying to come back to play five games this year. Sucks big time for the Blazers and their fans though. Another mediocre year..

on the CP3 trade, am I the only one that doesn't even think this trade made the Lakers better? They would've lost their center/forward in Gasol and their 6th man in Odom. Does Paul alone really make up for that?

[NJTank]

I went to the store asked the clerk for a Greg Oden Jersey and he brought out a suit.

[Still MIGHTY]

Go to the Blazers, ruin your knees.

Also, is that bulljive in New Orleans really better than a team in KeyArena? Stern through the 80s and 90s was pretty great. In the 2000s and beyond? Not so much.

At least Oden's trying to come back to play five games this year. Sucks big time for the Blazers and their fans though. Another mediocre year..

on the CP3 trade, am I the only one that doesn't even think this trade made the Lakers better? They would've lost their center/forward in Gasol and their 6th man in Odom. Does Paul alone really make up for that?

Nope. I'm a Laker fan and I agree with that. If the Paul deal went down, the Lakers would have HAD to get Howard or the whole thing was practically blown up for nothing. Now if Howard goes to the Nets, then I almost say call the Paul deal off, even more so with Chandler probably going to the Knicks. Unless the Lakers try to buy Marc Gasol back, there just isn't a lot to do if that proposed deal goes through.

CP3 and Kobe: AWESOME... Bynum and ?Artest? and ???: Ehhhhh not so much.

And with Stern's quotes this morning saying that the trade was vetoed because it's "more valuable" to keep Paul in New Orleans, I'd go as far as saying that NO big market team is getting Paul. And from the reporters and insiders I've heard/read, the trade was perfectly legal under the CBA, but the owners/Stern just vetoed it on their "principles". You can't deny the trade to the Lakers for all the reasons that have been thrown out there then turn around and send Paul to the Celtics/Knicks/(Clippers). That'd just be straight up disingenuous.

[Cujo]

Whoa ! Stern's gonna fly off the handle when he hears this one....

@Chris_Broussard

Dwight Howard met with NJ owner Mikhail Prokhorov & GM Billy King Thurs night in Miami, sources say. Orlando was unaware if meeting

Meeting was violation of NBA tampering rules.

[ninersdd]

Sucks for Brandon Roy. I remember watching him at Washington in the PAC 10, always a very good player. Guess I didn't how serious this knee was for him.

[CS85]

Retirement at 27, crazy.

[RedSox44]

Too sad about Brandon Roy. He could've been an all time great.

[Seadragon76]

Whoa ! Stern's gonna fly off the handle when he hears this one....

@Chris_Broussard

Dwight Howard met with NJ owner Mikhail Prokhorov & GM Billy King Thurs night in Miami, sources say. Orlando was unaware if meeting

Meeting was violation of NBA tampering rules.

Well, according to ESPN, Orlando is thinking of slapping some tampering charges on the Nets for this (It also said Houston would do this as well, but I fail to see where the Rockets land in the whole Dwight Howard issue...)

As for the Vetoed Paul deal: My opinion is that Stern did what he thought was good. Doesn't mean everyone else will like it. Plus, if you really think about it... Paul is about the only reason anyone gives a damn anymore about the New Orleans Hornets. He's a good player. Sending him to the Lakers may make them better in the short term (Losing Gasol and Bynum would hurt far more then they think), but the real loser would be New Orleans. There wouldn't be a reason for anyone to give a damn about the Hornets... as if anyone did to begin with.

I also think Stern has concerns about the small market owners being unable to compete against the big markets, but you can't just force players into a situation they're going to hate.

[FamousAtticus]

Orlando and Boston look to be trading (sign-and-trade) Glen "Big Baby" Davis for Brandon Bass.

My link

[LeGooo]

What are those results?

Relevance, making free agents want to sign there, and probably starting to make the playoffs regularly.

Oh, so nothing on the court like the other two examples

[RedSox44]

Orlando and Boston look to be trading (sign-and-trade) Glen "Big Baby" Davis for Brandon Bass.

My link

Welp, that's just been confirmed. Bass is a Celtic and Baby is a Magician (that's the singular for "Magic", right?)

[The_Admiral]

Also, is that bulljive in New Orleans really better than a team in KeyArena?

Not at all. People talk about how keeping the Hornets in New Orleans after Katrina was The Right Thing To Do. I submit that the right thing to do would have been to save Louisiana from itself by preventing them from having to subsidize a failing basketball team. Give them a generous settlement to be used toward charity and relief efforts, throw them the 2008 All-Star Game, and keep the Hornets in Oklahoma City.

Instead, their hand was forced by the NFL pushing the Saints down America's throats as God's Team Saving New Orleans But In Football Form. This idea, to me, was just as offensive and absurd as the idea that God was punishing New Orleans for gay people, and just as blithely unchallenged by really really stupid people. With the nation's leading sports behemoth (and its media arms) not just asserting its commitment to the city but aggressively pushing them as something bigger than not just football but all worldly things, even notwithstanding the world of difference between an established NFL team and a decidedly non-established NBA team, how could the NBA do anything but make this the hill they die on?

And that's what they've done now, more or less, with this Chris Paul clusterf-ck immediately squandering and eroding a great deal of the goodwill the league has gotten by finally getting its season underway. Behold the Swamp Coyotes.

[DustDevil61]

I don't think Stern will be commissioner for much longer after the Chris Paul debacle...I'm a fan of a small-market team and don't like teams like the Lakers getting more big names, yet I think it was a terrible idea to veto the Paul trade. It's one of the worst ideas to do just after ratifying a new CBA. On top of that, Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom remain Lakers.

[pmoehrin]

I don't think David Stern had alot to do with this trade getting vetoed.

If it was David Stern knocking the deal down I don't think it would have gotten this far. The message would have gotten out very quickly Chris Paul is not to be traded from the Hornets if it was him making the call. The whole screams backroom politics amongst the leagues owners and I think the Dan Gilbert e-mail is very telling of that. Your never going to get the bottom of what actually happened. These are powerful people that are not going to be put in a situation where they can be criticized .

I see Chris Paul may consider suing the NBA but I don't know what he can really sue them for. If you can prove that backroom politics prevented this deal from occurring he would have a case, but good luck proving that was the only motivation in getting this deal blocked. I think he's justified in being upset and taking that stance, but I don't think he could get very far with it.

[Rockstar Matt]

Stern didn't veto the trade because it was in the best interest for the Hornets. He'd been content to sit there and let Demps run the team. He just didn't want Paul forcing his way out of New Orleans because Stern is power-craving lunatic. I know the league owns the Hornets, but Stern is the commissioner of the freakin' NBA. You have to pick one Stern, be the commissioner, or the owner of the Hornets. You can't be both.

"The NBA has a collective bargaining agreement precisely to avoid occurrences like arbitrarily blocked trades. There are rules, and they matter. For Stern and the owners to change those rules on the same day they signed them into effect is essentially to decide that they have the power to control the league as an oligarchy rather than a partnership with their employees. If Chris Paul holds out, or even sues the NBA, he will do so because his social contract was breached. Would any player have agreed to reform the union and accept this deal if they'd known Paul wouldn't be allowed to change teams?

There are many problems with this situation, but at its root it's a breach of trust. Paul, Demps, and others thought they were operating one way and suddenly learned it was another way. David Stern may not block any more trades in his career, but it's hard to imagine how he can broker a deal with anyone -- from the owners to the players -- with the other party having much confidence he'll hold to it."

Sources

Because Stern is the commissioner and not the owner of the Hornets, even though he just acted like it, he cannot veto this trade. In fact, the 29 other NBA teams, own the Hornets.

P.S. I'm very saddened to hear that Brandon Roy is retiring. I never cared for the Blazers much, but he was a great player. It's a shame, really.

[The_Admiral]

Do you really think Stern singlehandedly blocked this deal? Or do you think it's more likely that the among the various owners of the Hornets, many of them did not want to gut the team before selling it while also making the strongest team in the league even stronger?

This is why leagues should not own teams.

[pmoehrin]

The crazy part of this is that its probably the best move the Hornets could have made.

Your never going to get return value for a guy like Chris Paul, but if you know he's not coming back you might as well get what you can for him while you still can for him. And the Hornets are getting back three borderline all-star players in Martin, Scola and Odom as well as a first round pick. Its not like they're giving up Chris Paul for nothing here.

The downside to it is that none of those guys are superstar players and this is a superstar league, so the Hornets would almost certainly finish dead last in attendance this year. So while on the court they may not lose all that much if anything (probably would even get better) at the box office they would get killed and that may be what may be what the owners were looking at with this deal.

[Starchild]

Howard to Nets close to a done deal

Brooklyn, we go hard.

Eat a bag of d**ks Lakers and Knicks fans. Would've liked to see the Celtics get him, but it prob wasn't going to happen anyway.

Might want to hold that bag for a little while longer. If these tampering charges stick, your big Russian bazillionaire may have just screwed the franchise out of Howard, and their chances of keeping Deron Williams when he opts out (assuming Howard is no longer in play) and may have to give up draft picks or something a la the Joe Smith debacle.

...and even if Dwight does become a Net, Chandler-Stat-Melo is the best front line in the league (even Magic Johnson admits it, via a recent tweet), and is more than capable of handling Dwight and whatever role player personnel they fill the front line with. Kris Humphries isn't scaring anyone. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he were too heartbroken over his divorce to play.

[LeGooo]

Warriors will offer DeAndre Jordan a four year deal, starting at $10 million annually. The Clippers previously offered $40 million over 5 years