Transcription
[Music] When the NBA reopened for business following the 2011 lockout that wiped out part of the ensuing season, the league's glitziest franchise was already primed to make the first and biggest splash. On the night of December 8, 2011, the same day owners and players ratified an agreement and the lockout, it appeared Kobe Bryant's Los Angeles Lakers had landed Chris Paul in a mammoth 3-team trade. Before the sun even set in Los Angeles, though, the deal was already off by will of Commissioner David Stern, who was representing the league-owned New Orleans Hornets at the time. The biggest trade that never happened was supposed to extend the Lakers' historic run of dominance into another decade. Instead, Stern's unprecedented veto forever changed the course of history for three franchises, multiple superstars, and the NBA as we know it.
[Music] The Lakers were coming off a 57-win season and second-round loss to the eventual champion Mavericks and were only a year and a half removed from their second straight championship. But when you're the Lakers, you're Kobe, and you just experienced an 11-year run that included seven Finals appearances and five titles, a second-round suite might as well be the lottery. Meanwhile, in New Orleans, the potential free agency of their superstar loomed over the franchise. CP3 had emerged as a perennial All-NBA point guard and MVP candidate to turn the then-Hornets, who relocated from Charlotte in 2002, into a Western Conference playoff mainstay. But he also had the option to elect free agency as soon as 2012, and it was doubtful he would commit to a small-market franchise that had never reached the conference finals. Making matters more complicated, minority owner Gary Schuest's attempt to buy out majority owner George Shin fell through. Shin no longer had the financial might to continue operating the Hornets, and the league stepped in to purchase the franchise for $300 million while it searched for a new owner who would keep the team in the Big Easy. Over in Houston, the Rockets were a solidly mediocre team in the wake of the Tracy McGrady-Yao Ming era, but General Manager Daryl Morey understood the NBA as a star's league, and he was hell-bent on landing such a player for his franchise. That all made the Lakers, Hornets, and Rockets perfect trading partners. And so, not long after the league and the players' union reached a tentative agreement to end the lockout in late November, a mammoth deal was reached between the three teams that would have sent Paul to Los Angeles, Paul Gasol to Houston, and Lamar Odom, Goran Dragic, Luis Scola, Kevin Martin, and a 2012 first-round pick to New Orleans. With the start of the shortened 2011-2012 season just over two weeks out, the Lakers and Rockets thought they had found what they were looking for, while the Hornets appeared to have landed the kind of package that would allow them to begin plotting their post-Paul future while remaining competitive in the present. As we now know, it wasn't meant to be.
Kobe: "Is this trade thing fair to people involved?"
Bryant: "Um, I mean, you know, unfortunately, it's just the nature of the beast. That's just, uh, the business that we're in. In order to make trades, and in this situation, the commissioner has a right to, to avoid detroit."
As the NBA prepared to officially reopen for post-lockout business, Stern, who was acting not just as commissioner but as the leader of the NBA's collective group of owners who now ran the Hornets, vetoed the blockbuster. The only thing more stunning than the trade itself was how quickly it was nixed, and the fact it was Stern who did it. With Lakers fans enraged, three franchises temporarily paralyzed, and the basketball world at large in a state of confusion, the NBA denied that it was the owners who squashed the trade. But an email from Cavs owner Dan Gilbert to Commissioner Stern, which was obtained by multiple media outlets at the time, plainly indicated how at least one NBA governor felt, calling the potential pro-Lakers trade a "travesty." Gilbert wrote, "This trade should go to a vote of the 29 owners of the Hornets. I could not remember ever seeing a trade where a team got by far the best player in the trade and saved over $40 million in the process." Gilbert continued. For his part, Stern told Sports Illustrated in 2018 that GM Dell Demps, who Stern referred to as a "lousy GM," had incorrectly informed the Lakers and Rockets that he had authority to sign off on the deal. "To this day, everyone always asks me, 'Why did you keep Chris Paul from going to the Lakers?'" Stern told SI. "No team sells or trades a future Hall of Famer without the owner signing off, and I was the owner's rep." Former NBA Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations Stu Jackson told the LA Times in 2021 that the reason Stern vetoed the trade was simply that he felt the Hornets' return wasn't good enough for a player of Paul's caliber and that he wanted the team to remain attractive to prospective buyers. While Jackson argued that the incoming package would have made the Hornets the quintessential "stuck in the middle" team, too good to land a franchise-changing talent in the draft but nowhere near good enough to contend. In any event, the deal was off. A monumental executive decision that shaped franchises, rejigged careers, and ultimately altered the course of NBA history.
For starters, the Lakers never came close to getting Bryant the help he needed in the latter stages of his career, as future moves for Steve Nash and Dwight Howard blew up in the team's face. Odom was dealt to Dallas shortly after the veto trade to create the trade exception that would eventually be used to land Nash, and Pau stuck around until leaving as a veteran free agent in 2014. Rather than competing for more championships with Paul at his side, an aging Bryant's body slowly began to break down under the weight of carrying disappointing Lakers teams every night. Los Angeles wouldn't get back in the title picture until LeBron James joined the purple and gold near the end of the decade. The non-trade for Paul also gave rise to the Lakers' worst nightmare and one previously fought inconceivable: playing second fiddle to the Clippers. A week after the trade that wasn't, Paul was successfully sent to the Clippers for a package consisting of Eric Gordon, Al-Farouq Aminu, Chris Kaman, and the draft pick that turned into Austin Rivers. Paul joined a young team on the rise with Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan and helped turn the NBA's biggest laughing stock into Lob City, a must-watch team that made six consecutive playoff appearances, though the point guard wouldn't truly chase postseason success until a 2021 Finals run with Phoenix. Meanwhile, with Paul out the door and an inferior Clippers package in the mix rather than the Lakers-Rockets trade haul that might have kept the team competitive, New Orleans finished dead last in the Western Conference in that lockout-shortened campaign. Their miserable season, however, helped them win the 2012 draft lottery and the right to select Anthony Davis first overall. What might have been if the Hornets had won more games that season with incoming players from the Lakers and Rockets, and the Cavs or Kings had instead owned the lottery positioning that landed Davis? Imagine A.D. joining Kyrie Irving in Cleveland, and how that might have altered the timeline that led to LeBron's 2014 return. Would Sacramento be in the midst of a 16-year playoff drought had they ended up with Davis on draft night rather than Thomas Robinson?
Then there's Morey's Rockets. Following a third straight winning yet playoff-less season in 2011-12, Houston traded Kyle Lowry to Toronto for a draft pick and later packaged Martin and other pieces to pry James Harden out of Oklahoma City. If the Rockets had acquired Paul in 2011, Harden may not have been available to the team in 2012, and an eight-year playoff run that included two Conference Finals appearances, one of which saw Paul ironically join Harden and Houston's backcourt, would never have materialized. And how might an alternate universe with Gasol leading the 2011-12 Rockets have changed things for Lowry in Houston? Would the future star point guard have ever ended up in Toronto, where his arrival helped spur the most successful period in Raptor's history and which ultimately culminated in Canada's team winning its first ever championship in 2019? Ultimately, every unrealized trade comes with an endless list of what-ifs and potentially league-altering ramifications. But we usually don't hear about the trades that don't happen, and often aren't even aware trade talks occurred. In the case of Paul's vetoed 2011 trade to the Lakers, we watched it unfold just as NBA Twitter was taking off in real time before our eyes, and the NBA would never be the same.
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