ESPN's Mike and Mike Furious About Stern's Rejection

[Fafnir]

These guys have been ranting all morning about the audacity of Stern to reject the trade. While entitled to their opinion, they make no effort to present the other POV,which is what they normally try to do. Their guest Chris Broussard was even more outraged, if that were possible.  They simply cannot accept the special circumstances here: the NO Hornets are owned by the entire league, which is comprised of all 30 teams.  Those teams have a voice, comparable to a Board of Directors, over decisions made by that team. They collectively decided that the trade would not be good for the league, as it would reinforce the trend of rewarding super stars and agents pressuring owners to make trades to the handful of desirable big market teams.  If I were a Laker fan, I would be angry, but as a fan of the NBA, who wants to see a more balanced distribution of talent, I believe the League got this right. 

I completely disagree, as this sets a terrible precedent.  All 3 teams agreed to this deal, I don't think it's appropriate to intervene in a deal unless there is evidence of collusion, attempt to circumvent a league rule, or some other shady dealing. 

Now any owner can fight any transaction New Orleans makes if it doesn't directly benefit his own team.  This is a huge mess.

This is not true. The Lakers did not officially sign off; in fact the reports right before the league rejected the trade was that the Lakers felt they needed to improve it for themselves. The Hornets never officially signed off because their approval is subject to league approval.  And apparently the trade doesn't even work on the trade checker.

It works if NOH renounce David West and all their other free agents to get $10 million dollars under the cap.

The trade checker doesn't give you that option, but the trade as proposed does work under league rules that way.

By renouncing D West, what you are really, de facto, is including him into the trade to LA, because everyone here knows that he would do a sign and trade to the Lakers.  So that just makes it worse.

That's not necessarily true they'd have to do some serious wrangling to make that work under the salary cap rules as the NOH would be over it after the trade.

But who knows, that could have been the mysetious move for a PF that LA beat writers are talking about as the next move for LA

[CDawg834]

These guys have been ranting all morning about the audacity of Stern to reject the trade. While entitled to their opinion, they make no effort to present the other POV,which is what they normally try to do. Their guest Chris Broussard was even more outraged, if that were possible.  They simply cannot accept the special circumstances here: the NO Hornets are owned by the entire league, which is comprised of all 30 teams.  Those teams have a voice, comparable to a Board of Directors, over decisions made by that team. They collectively decided that the trade would not be good for the league, as it would reinforce the trend of rewarding super stars and agents pressuring owners to make trades to the handful of desirable big market teams.  If I were a Laker fan, I would be angry, but as a fan of the NBA, who wants to see a more balanced distribution of talent, I believe the League got this right. 

I completely disagree, as this sets a terrible precedent.  All 3 teams agreed to this deal, I don't think it's appropriate to intervene in a deal unless there is evidence of collusion, attempt to circumvent a league rule, or some other shady dealing. 

Now any owner can fight any transaction New Orleans makes if it doesn't directly benefit his own team.  This is a huge mess.

This is not true. The Lakers did not officially sign off; in fact the reports right before the league rejected the trade was that the Lakers felt they needed to improve it for themselves. The Hornets never officially signed off because their approval is subject to league approval.  And apparently the trade doesn't even work on the trade checker.

So maybe they would have tried to have an extra player thrown in, but I don't think they would have walked from the deal over that.  It sounds like it was pretty much good to go in principle (while maybe not signed off on), and the league stopped it.  In any event, even if the Lakers had signed off, the league was ready to kill it, and I don't think they should.