Two days before the five-year anniversary of the nixed trade that would have paired a 26-year-old Chris Paul with Kobe Bryant on the Los Angeles Lakers, former NBA commissioner David Stern shed some light on the league’s decision not to allow the deal to go through.
David Stern finally opens up on Chris Paul trade that ‘never got made’ in 2011
Stern said he didn’t ‘void’ a trade, it just never happened.
Photo by Mike Young/Getty Images
On Tuesday, Stern was the subject of an in-depth question and answer session with Marist and Columbia University students in New York City when someone asked him about the deal that reinvigorated one franchise and devastated another.
“What cancellation?,” Stern asked, referring to the idea that he himself vetoed the trade. “The GM [Dell Demps] was not authorized to make that trade. And acting on behalf of owners, we decided not to make it. I was an owner rep. There was nothing to ‘void.’ It just never got made.”
The New Orleans Hornets had agreed to send Paul to the Lakers in a three-team trade that would have shipped Pau Gasol to the Houston Rockets. The Hornets would have received Lamar Odom, Goran Dragic, Luis Scola, and Kevin Martin.
It is believed Los Angeles would have gone on to trade Andrew Bynum for Dwight Howard.
Instead, the deal was killed, and Hornets agreed to send Paul to the Clippers in exchange for Eric Gordon, Chris Kaman, Al-Farouq Aminu, and the No. 10 overall pick in 2012. Stern said the decision got him “killed” in the public eye.
“When you’re the commissioner and you have two teams that are ticked off at you, as in the Lakers and Houston, and the GMs without wanting to be attributed, spend their time trashing you, the wrong impression can be granted,” he continued. “It was one of the few times I decided to just go radio silent and let it play out, and I got killed. So the answer is: there was never a trade. It was never approved by me as owner rep.”
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