Rumors: Immediate Reaction to Potential Paul to Lakers Deal

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Published: December 8, 2011

Even newer update– Marc Stein: One source close to the three-team Chris Paul trade talks just told ESPN.com: “The deal is off.”

Reasons given are that the NBA pressured the Hornets not to deal Paul there.

New Update- Woj: NBA owners have pushed commissioner David Stern to kill the deal sending Chris Paul to the Los Angeles Lakers, sources tell Y! Sports. The NBA is now pushing New Orleans GM Dell Demps to pull the plug on the trade and keep Chris Paul.

From Marc Stein– ESPN CP3 trade latest: Trade with Lakers will NOT go through Friday and Chris Paul is expected in Hornets camp, according to sources. It was not immediately clear, sources said, if three-way trade involving Hornets, Lakers and Rockets is merely snagged or in jeopardy

Update (that for some reason didn’t post an hour + ago)- Major media outlets are saying this is a done deal with Houston as the third team. We’ll have details and analysis up as soon as it’s official. Hornets postponed the opening of training camp tomorrow, so it’s possibly we will see final resolution before then.

First off, two minutes before the news that the Lakers trade could be happening soon came out, I tweeted the following—“ Couldn’t it help Hornets if big source were to report that they are close to accepting LAL deal but will wait for final offers?”

I can’t help but think that’s a possibility here. Make it know that you WILL NOT WAIT. Put a big public deal that, a. isn’t as horrible as it’s made out to (assuming lots and lots of first round picks and a good chunkof Houston’s young talent are included), and b. Will create panic and fear in the hears of the other Western Conference lowballers (that’s you, Clips and Warriors) that the Lakers dynasty will never be toppled and that no matter they do they won’t be competing for 5+ years. Is that true? Not necessarily, but CP3 on LA is a scary thought. If you can prevent it and make your team better, you do it, even if you might have to give up slightly more than you want.

So I’m expecting that we see the best offers from Golden State and the Clippers (who curiously will reportedly sign Caron Butler for 3 years, 24 million) in the next day or two. Will they be better than the Lakers/Rockets offer? That’s tough to say since we don’t know the details of it, but we can assume that if they still have any interest in Paul, they will need to offer something besides expiring deals and marginal young talent.

At this point it seems like Demps doesn’t want to even head into camp with Paul on the roster. I assume that’s why he’s putting the screws to Paul’s suitors to put their best offer forward. This might even make the Lakers deal better in the end since they could get some competition in the end.

Well played, sir. Well played. Now let’s see if Demps closes out the chess match.

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