The Basketball Diaries – Saturday 10 December
Damian
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With the way events have unfoled in the United States this week we turn our attentions to the NBA for this installment of the basketball diaries.
Stern by name, stern by nature
Going to bed Thursday night Chris Paul was a Laker and Pau Gasol was a Rocket. Waking up Friday morning Gasol was off to training camp in LA and Chris Paul remained a Hornet. David Stern will lose count of how many times he gets asked why in the coming weeks. If you have somehow missed all this, Stern and the league vetoed the trade going through. Everybody is still waiting for a reason for nixing the deal. Well unless you include ‘basketball reasons’ as a detailed explanation.
Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban said that this is exactly the kind of deal that the NBA was trying to avoid during this summer’s talks, a deal which sees a small market team lose its superstar player. As ever the league wants its cake and it wants to eat it. It hasn’t been able to regulate for this eventuality so it just puts the kybosh on it with carefree abandon. The NBA’s micro management is of detriment to the future of the league.
If there is one thing that has always impressed in the American sports arena, it has been the ability of leagues to make their competitions competitive. To give the team with the worst record the chance of the first round draft pick. To move a franchise across the country (or to another country in the case of the former Atlanta Thrashers) when they get very little love from their home town population. Managing the inequality of bargaining power is an admirable goal but it has to be enshrined in policy not policed on an ad-hoc basis.
Oh and did I mention the league actually own the Hornets, the team who stand to lose their star point guard?
The league cannot make players stay in small markets.It has to continue to redress the balance elsewhere through salary caps and other mechanisms designed to level out the talent on rosters. And if Chris Paul is allowed to join another team other than the Lakers, David Stern IS going to have to do some serious explaining.
