Chris Paul goes to Hollywood

Chris Paul is finally getting his wish by being traded to Los Angeles.  It's just not the team he originally expected to play for.  After commissioner David Stern intervened to block a deal between the league owned Hornets and the LA Lakers, the other team in LA swooped in to steal the super star point guard.

The Clippers made perhaps their biggest move in franchise history by trading a boatload of assets to deal for one of the game's elite players.  In exchange for Paul, the Clippers will send rising star Eric Gordon, last year's lottery pick Al-Farouq Aminu, Chris Kaman (a serviceable big man that is a former All-Star and on an expiring contract), and an unprotected 2012 draft pick that belongs to Minnesota (which will almost certainly be a high lottery pick).  That's a lot to give up for one player, but the chance to trade for one of the league's top 5 players in his prime doesn't come along often.

Paul will team with Blake Griffin, one of the game's best young power forwards, to form a formidable duo.  Their strengths compliment each other well and they'll destroy opponents on the pick and roll with Paul lobbing up highlight worthy alley oop passes to Griffin.  Paul is a multi threat offensive weapon capable of attacking the rim as a scorer (18.7 points per game in his career) as well as dishing it out to teammates (9.9 assists).  He can also bring it on the defensive end (2.4 steals) and has made the All-Defensive 1st or 2nd team in three of the past four seasons.  With apologies to reigning MVP Derrick Rose, Paul is the league's best all around point guard.

Meanwhile, the Lakers must be furious.  They had a trade in place a week ago to land Paul for a package that included Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom.  The deal also included the Houston Rockets, who would have received Gasol in the deal in exchange for sending assets headlined by Kevin Martin and Louis Scola to New Orleans, along with Odom.  Their plans were derailed when Stern stepped in to squash the deal after several small market owners (most notably, Dan Gilbert and Michael Jordan) whined about how the recently concluded lockout was supposed to prevent big name stars from fleeing small markets for large markets.  With their gigantic TV contract, the Lakers are the league's richest team, making them the last destination these other owners wanted to see trading for a player of Paul's caliber.  The logic behind blocking the trade was indefensible, as everyone knew the Hornets would be forced to trade Paul at some point since he had no intention of staying in New Orleans after this season.  The assets they would have received in that trade was an impressive haul and may have even been the better end of the deal than what the Lakers would have gotten with Paul.  Now the Lakers will be forced to watch Paul play for another team that not only resides in the same city, but shares the same building.

To justify those actions, the league could not allow Paul to be traded without a more desirable deal being offered to New Orleans.  The Clippers initial attempts to acquire Paul fell apart when they refused to include both Gordon and the draft pick from Minnesota in the deal, offering to include Eric Maynor in place of one of those assets.  When talks heated up again days later, the Clippers relented on their stance and agreed to include both of their prize assets, while keeping Maynor.  That was apparently enough to make the package meet the league's approval, so their persistence paid off.

The Lakers, on the other hand, panicked in the wake up their deal falling apart and traded a disgruntled Odom (who had his feelings hurt by being included in a trade without being consulted) to Dallas for nothing more than salary relief, an essentially useless 2nd round draft pick and a decent sized trade exemption.  It was a mind boggling move, considering Odom is the reigning 6th man of the year and an important cog to a team that's biggest strength was it's ability to rotate three 7-footers in their front court.  If nothing else, he was one of their best trade chips and they just wasted it.  Perhaps this deal would make some sense if it was a prelude to a bigger move, but I don't see how this would help them in an attempt to lure Dwight Howard to LA.  It doesn't free up nearly enough salary to create cap room for next year and the trade exemption isn't large enough to swallow the contract of Hedo Turkoglu.  Orlando isn't likely to bite on a Howard for Bynum and Gasol deal unless they can unload some of their bad contracts on LA.  For now, this appears as nothing more than the Lakers getting screwed out of a perfectly legitimate deal by the league and the fall out resulted in them giving in to the demands on one of their four best players to be traded to the team that just swept them out of last year's playoffs.

In the end, Paul still winds up in LA and the Hornets come away with an even better package than they would have gotten from the Lakers.  Knowing that Paul was going to bolt this summer, the Hornets cashed in for more than they could have hoped for, while also cutting costs, which should help the league's quest to find the team a new owner.  As for the Clippers, they instantly become a contender in the West by pairing one of the league's best established players with one of it's fastest rising stars.  As part of the deal, Paul will agree to pick up his player option for next season, so ensuring they have him for at least two seasons helps mitigate the loss of young talent they gave up.  If the team finds success in the next couple of seasons it may sway Paul to sign an extension with the team, which in turn would likely result in Griffin agreeing to stay with the Clippers long term (that is, as long as owner Donald Sterling doesn't manage to screw it up.  A legitimate concern for Clippers fans).  If not, at least they get two seasons of the All-Star pair, which is enough to build excitement for a long suffering fan base and help them step out of the shadow of the Lakers.  Stealing the Lakers thunder makes the deal worth it for the Clippers.  It finally makes them relevant.