After Nixing Paul Deal, Stern Needs To Channel Commissioner Landis and Reverse Course

In a move that won about as much favorable press as Bud Selig declaring the All-Star Game a tie, NBA Commissioner David Stern tarnished his legacy when two days ago he voided a completely legitimate trade that would have sent star point guard Chris Paul from the New Orleans Hornets to the Los Angeles Lakers, Lakers center Pau Gasol to the Rockets, and three starters and a first round draft pick to the Hornets.  The move was a blatantly illegitimate kowtow to the owners of other franchises.  Stern needs to reverse himself, and with a figleaf of the trade being resubmitted to him modestly tweaked, hopefully will do so imminently.

Don't get me wrong.  I hate the Los Angeles Lakers as much as the next guy, and I also think the general idea that animated the Commish in nixing the trade is a good one -- that it is desirable for stars to stay in small markets.  It just isn't a valid basis to nuke an arms' length deal among league executives.  I also think it's a good idea for all of the best players in the league to play for the Chicago Bulls.  That just wouldn't be a valid basis to invalidate trades that cut against that entirely laudable end.

And Stern isn't admitting he vetoed the trade simply to keep a good player in a small market, and throw a sop to the small market owners who were aggressive in forcing a lockout to try to remake the Association more to their benefit.  No, he's standing behind the asinine assertion that "basketball reasons" are why the trade was vetoed.  I guess everything touching upon the league could be deemed "basketball reasons" at some level.  But what is meant in this case is that the trade violates some notion of competitive balance.

How can Stern say that with a straight face?  The Commissioner did nothing to invalidate the insane handover by Minnesota GM Kevin McHale of Kevin Garnett to the Celtics and McHale's longtime buddy and former Celtics teammate Danny Ainge.  The trade, which brought Al Jefferson to the Twin Cities, destroyed Minnesota and allowed the Celtics to move from one of the league's worst teams to a championship the following year.  It was a ridiculous trade that reeked of conflict of interest, as McHale aided a buddy and his former team.  And the league stood by.  

How about the equally ridiculous Pau Gasol trade, that sent the big man from Memphis to the Lakers for Kwame Brown, Javaris Crittendon, and Aaron McKie?  Stern stood by quietly as that travesty was foisted on the rest of the NBA (taking a star from a small market team to LA for far less in exchange than the Hornets are getting for Paul.)  If time travel were possible, all Laker and Celtics-hating fans in America would like to go back in time and undo those two ridiculous deals, which just incidentally returned us briefly to having the Lakers and Celtics predominate in the sport.  But time travel is impossible, and until this week, so was David Stern mucking around with competitive balance in such a hamfisted way.

The deeper problem I see here is the league trying to micromanage who gets what.  You saw this with the invention in the new collective bargaining agreement of the Derrick Rose rule.  The league undercompensates rookies in their early years, keeping them in compensation lockstep in relation to where they are picked.  But now, under the Rose rule, If you've twice been voted an All-Star starter or won an MVP, that player can receive 5% more of his team's salary cap.  It isn't that the rule makes no sense; it does in the abstract.  The problem is that the "rule" appears to everyone fashioned to a particular case.  It seems tailored to permit the Bulls to keep Rose in Chicago, a major market, which is good for the league.  The point of rules and laws is that they are neutral and of general application, and are not ad hoc choices of the powerful.

So it is with this trade.  The league owns the New Orleans franchise, and though New Orleans has a general manager (Dell Demps), the league does have oversight over Demps.  The small-market owners insist on having a system that helps them.  In the abstract, that's fine too.  But they can't veto particular trades by the Hornets, because that's not having a system that helps balance, it's creating balance by authoritarian fiat.  It isn't rulemaking or neutrality, it's a power grab.  Lest one harbor any doubt on this point, Cleveland owner Dan Gilbert plays the ugly tycoon in his letter-tantrum arguing against the trade.  His basic gripe?  The Lakers helped themselves, not that the Hornets failed to get some value for Paul.  And there is a legitimate argument that the trade favored New Orleans.  Paul's bad knees could lead to early retirement, as happened recently to the Blazers' Brandon Roy.  The Hornets are going to lose Paul to free agency after this year and get nothing, as would have happened to the Jazz with Deron Williams.  They made the right move.

Now Stern needs to make the right move, to restore some semblance of neutrality and authority to his position.  The NBA did not become the success story it is by being ruled by the whims of angry Dan Gilberts.  Even Laker fans are entitled to the benefits of a well-engineered trade.  And the Hornets franchise deserves some value for Paul.  (Maybe Gilbert could find a player or two to add and make it a four-way deal, to help the Hornets out.)  The Commish is not a dumb guy.  He understands the storm of criticism his move engendered.  He also understands that if the trade is not amended and approved, any eventual deal for Paul (imagine him, say, going to the Knicks) will look like the Commissioner chose his destination, just as conspiracists like to claim the Ewing draft was really fixed, or claim that playoffs are manipulated by referee assignments.

Frivolous as sports are, they require a gloss of neutrality and fairness, or the story line they peddle fails.  It's why baseball hired Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis after the Black Sox scandal to clean up baseball's image.  Landis was the first Commissioner.  He demanded lifetime tenure and unlimited power, to bolster his credibility.  He got it.  Stern has had that tenure.  But he has become far too beholden to the owners, as the Rose rule and the Paul trade imply.  He needs more distance and neutrality.  More Landis, and less Gilbert.  Commissioner, reconsider and approve that trade.  Your sport and legacy demand it.