A few months ago, Chris Paul announced his retirement from the NBA after 21 seasons. He will go down as one of the greatest point guards of all time, and he will almost certainly be a first-ballot Hall of Famer after leading the league in assists per game five times and in steals per game six times.
In 2011, when he was 26 years of age and early in his prime, Paul was almost traded to the Los Angeles Lakers. But the trade was vetoed by then-NBA commissioner David Stern, who was acting as the owner of the New Orleans Hornets, the team Paul had been with at the time.
On Tuesday, Paul went on “The Pat McAfee Show” and talked about the experience of the vetoed trade. He said that just before the trade was denied by Stern, he talked to late Lakers legend Kobe Bryant.
“It was very, very wild to say the least,” Paul said. “It was crazy times. Our team at the time was owned by the league. The league owned our team. We had just came out of CBA (collective bargaining agreement) negotiations. It’s a lot of stories that’s been out there now where people say this is what happened, this is what happened. I remember where I was.
“Me and Kobe had actually got on the phone and talked that night and then it was basically like a little [expletive] storm from there. It was a crazy time and just knowing the emotional roller coaster that it was at the time was really different. But I got the phone call basically that this trade ain’t happening no more.”
The thinking is that one reason the trade didn’t happen was that the attempt came right after the end of a lockout and other teams pressured the league to deny the deal because it would’ve reduced the amount of parity across the league. Over the years, the belief has been that owners have been pushing for CBA rules that would increase parity and place more restrictions on flagship big-market teams such as the Lakers.
“After sitting through all those CBA negotiations when we came out they wanted to…the whole point of that CBA negotiation was to make the league more balanced,” Paul noted. “And so I gotta go back and look at the letter that a few of the owners I guess sent in. But I guess when the trade happened a lot of the owners from other teams was like, ‘I guess that ain’t competitive balance.’ So because the team was owned by the league, all the different owners felt like, I think they had ownership of the team. It’s no go.”
Had the trade gone through, it could’ve allowed Bryant to win at least one more championship and extended one of the greatest eras in Lakers history into the early 2010s. Instead, Paul was ultimately traded to the Los Angeles Clippers. While he immediately transformed the Clippers from laughing stocks into a competitive team, they never reached the NBA Finals.
Paul would eventually get to the championship series in 2021 with the Phoenix Suns, but he retired without a world championship ring.
This article originally appeared on LeBron Wire: Chris Paul said he talked to Kobe Bryant before vetoed trade to Lakers
Reporting by Robert Marvi, LeBron Wire / LeBron Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Robert Marvi, LeBron Wire | USA TODAY Network
