Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert is in the news again for all the wrong reasons.
He and other small market NBA owners bitched and complained to Commissioner David Stern over a three-team trade that would have sent Chris Paul to the Los Angeles Lakers. Never mind that the New Orleans Hornets and Houston Rockets would have received Lamar Odom and Pau Gasol respectively, but those owners did not like the notion of the rich getting richer.
Welcome to “Occupy NBA” folks.
This is where small- and mid-market teams cry about how the richer teams (Lakers, my New York Knicks, Boston Celtics, Miami Heat) still are getting theirs. Hell, people are bitching at Wall Street, might as well do it in the NBA.
Once again, all of this would have been solved if the NBA had a true revenue sharing plan that the NFL and NHL enjoy. Otherwise, the NBA continues to look more and more like Major League Baseball.
At any rate, why in the hell would the commissioner kill the Paul trade? That in itself is making the NBA look like the Bad News Bears.
I mean why in the hell did we have a lockout in the first place? All the owners got a bigger piece of the revenue pie, right? So why are the small market owners STILL whining?
A commissioner vetoing a trade negotiated by three teams? Forget the Bad News Bears, it’s more like the old Soviet Union.
Why doesn’t Stern just come out and say that he wants Paul to end up in New York? We all know that’s going to be the end game because Paul is sure as hell not signing an extension to remain in New Orleans.
As for the small market teams who wanted to kill the trade, try manning up in drafting better, creating revenue streams and improving your organizational structure.
As for Dan Gilbert, this mother-(trucker) did not have a problem when he had LeBron James and was winning 60+ games per year. He didn’t have a problem when he tried to get Chris Bosh to join LeBron in Cleveland before both signed with the Heat. Now he is crying because his small-market team has no stars playing for him.
To Gilbert and other small-market owners complaining about where NBA stars choose to go: STFU and man up.
This is America morons. Make your own way a la the San Antonio Spurs, Oklahoma City Thunder and Memphis Grizzlies and make better business decisions.
Otherwise, just sell the team and get lost.
Categories: NBA, sports story
Stern folded like a cheap suit to the small market owners and the NBA is looking ridiculous b/c the 3 way trade was a solid one besides, I thought that the labor agreement was suppose to address the issue of the balance of power between small/mid/large market teams…did they not know that Paul wanted to leave N.O…C’mon….FREE CHRIS PAUL….lol
Yeah,
The NBA really messed up on this one. Why in the hell would the NBA cripple one of its own teams (the Hornets)? And for what, to make a point to the players?!
SMH…