The Artesticle

i agree, people are making it out to be the hornets got nothing in return for chris paul. they certainly got their fair share of players. simply put it was absolutely not fair for stern, or anyone for that matter to block the trade after it had happened. everyone knew the lakers were talking with the hornets, why not, as jim buss put it, "take him off the block til July." or, to make matters even simpler, since stern doesnt want his players to dictate where they should play, simply bar the lakers and knicks from even putting up an offer in the first place. you cant allow a trade to be finalized between two teams, agreed by both GMs, and turn around and void it when it doesn't break any of the rules in the cba just because you dont want him to play in LA. me, personally, after the initial excitement, wasn't even too fond of the trade that depleted our front court. nobody knows if chris paul can even co-exist with kobe since both need to dominate the ball, not to mention it made us incredibly thin up front. however, by voiding the deal, you essentially [expletive]ed up the entire season for LA or whatever plans they may have had after the trade. now, we have two disgruntled players coming back after a trade has already been agreed upon. how do you salvage the season at this point? stern basically wasted the entire 2011-2012 season for the lakers. that's the part that angers me the most, not the trade. the entire year is now a waste because of this, it cannot be salvaged at this point. and the lakers management shares none of the blame, they played by the rules. how would they knew the trade would be voided when something like this has never happened in the history of the nba.

well then if that's the case if dwight gets traded to new jersey or new york tomorrow the deal should be voided (or wherever he said he wanted to go) and also chris paul never stated if he was going to sign an extension with the lakers or not, unless i missed it. for all we know he couldve left for new york after this year in free agency.

Paul didnt force his way to the Lakers though... his first choice was and has always been the Knicks...

fwiw, as a laker fan, if this whole trade fiasco doesnt work itself out, im gonna be rooting for lebron and the heat to win the finals to stick it to the small market teams and all these bitchy owners. if cp3 cant come to LA, i hope he finds his way to NY to team up with amare and carmelo, and hopefully dwight finds a way to NJ to team up with deron. as long as boston doesnt win ill be happy with either miami/ny/nj

kevin ding's twitter: the league didn't even offer mitch an explanation why the trade couldn't go through... cant wait til tomorrow

kevin ding's twitter: ^ well what do you know.

my biggest issue with this no trade is that it will probably cause issues in the locker room. imagine lamar and pau coming back for training camp... that would be [expletive]ing awkward as for the trade itself, yes i was very excited when it was initially announced, but gasol and odom are two very solid bigs, and im pretty positive gasol's on the track to bounce back after his great performances with spain. obviously "chris paul" is going to create excitement in LA, but if you really break us down, it'll leave us depleted up front. if our only deal this offseason was to trade for chris paul, and then fill in the forward spot through random trades/free agency, i honestly don't think we'd be any better than we were last year. so there's speculation that we were also going to make a trade for dwight, which is still very possible with bynum being the center piece. we can still have a core of dwight/kobe/gasol/odom, which IMO is on par or even better than dwight/kobe/paul. now the biggest issue is, of course, how this will effect the locker room, which is why i think this cancellation is totally BS. bottom line, in my opinion, trading for chris paul is only good for us if we had a trade lined up for dwight. if not, i think the trade actually made us worse, since bynum will probably miss his annual 50 games. that being said, if we had a deal lined up for dwight, we can still make that deal, while keeping gasol/dom, which IMO makes us stronger. this of course, not dealing with chemistry

just read about this: http://www.ocregister.com/sports/lakers-329235-billion-new.html holy shit. buss family laughing their way to the bank.

really? as an eagles fan you should know not to get your hopes up. i was pretty optimistic about the team heading in but in the bottom of my mind i was prepared for a let down. with this loss our playoff chances are pretty much toast i believe. not much more you really say at this point but this team has been a disappointment all year, which is nothing new for us.

it shouldnt shock anyone that he wants to return to LA. id take him over fish/blake

lmao

first three quarters: lebron last quarter: wade no contest

kevin kolb sucks

the 2012 draft is supposedly strong on quarterbacks though. i dont understand why you would give up a 1st this year and a 1st/2nd next year for a 32 year old quarterback who has never won a playoff game. for the raiders sake i hope this works out but i personally dont see it happening. their 2012 draft class will be pretty much nonexistent unless they pick up some big steals late.

LMAO Raiders got fleece again, are you kidding me? As it currently stands the Raiders don't have a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th round pick in the 2012 draft. What are they thinking...

i cant believe our defense actually held them to 42 yards rushing great and well needed win. hopefully we'll get this season back on track after the bye week. this game wasn't perfect but we showed a lot of promise, especially if the defense can start holding their opponents down.

yeah it was worth it. we don't beat boston without ron, plain and simple. i loved the signing when it was first announced but my problem with it has always been the number of years. 5 years is a lot to commit, but since he was so important in helping us repeat it was definitely worth it. like choseone said, ron has bulked up to the point where it's severely hindering his game. if he takes the time to lose some weight i definitely think he'll be much more mobile and improved.

omg this is embarrassing defense cant stop a nosebleed cant even tackle anybody offense is sloppy as [expletive] we dont deserve to win this game. i hope andy reid gets fired.

lol I'm hoping we'll find some help next year. out of our starting linebackers, all three are below average. casey matthews is terrible, fokou should be a backup, and chaney is probably average on his best day. i never understood why we tried to reload our defense and completely ignored the linebacker position in the offseason. i wouldn't be too surprised if andy reid neglected linebackers again for next year. he just doesnt care about the position for some reason. never has

here's hoping that we use our first, two seconds, and one third round pick in the 2012 draft on 4 linebackers chances are that we'll hit on at least 2 and have 2 solid linebackers for once in the history of Andy Reid. that would definitely help the defense by leaps and bounds!!!!!!!!!! yay!

Terrible loss. Hope Vick is ok. On a side note, I've always heard the staff was very high on Kafka, and today kind of showed why. He didn't win the game for us, but being put in his situation, he looked a lot better than I expected. Also, nice to see Maclin play well after his summer illness (minus the one dropped pass that lost the game) and McCoy was pretty sick as always.

I don't understand the argument for a hard cap. If, let's say, teams are only allowed to spend 50 million in contracts, and a free agent is offered 1 million to play for Cleveland or 1 million to play for Los Angeles or New York, it's a no brainer for me. If a hard cap forms, player salaries will likely be reduced, and free agents would be lured by the potential draw of endorsements/marketing to make more money, and obviously they'd get hell of a lot more exposure playing for big market teams than small market ones. In the end how you manage a team is most important, and if you're going to throw multi million dollars at somebody like Drew Gooden, or refuse to trade JJ Hickson for Amare Stoudimire, it's all the product of bad management. The hard cap fixes none of this. I don't mind a hard cap at all, because regardless, the Lakers will succeed. I just don't buy into the fact that it will benefit small market teams all that much.

http://espn.go.com/dallas/nba/story/_/id/6973675/nba-lockout-derek-fisher-los-angeles-lakers-emails-players-says-owners-rift

After the 2013 season the Lakers have no contracts on the books. The front office is basically giving this core another 3 year run at the title, and after that, who knows what's going to happen. Who knows if Kobe, Pau, or even Drew will be back. The roster could be completely turned over in 3 years of time, with new, younger players who could potentially usher in a fresh start. The Clippers can very well beat the Lakers record wise in a couple of years, just like they did in 2006. All it will do is usher in more attendance and possibly change the minds of some fairweather fans, but the Laker nation will still be alive and well just as it was in 2006. It will still be a Laker town and to think otherwise is idiotic. It's going to take more than a couple of 50 or 60 win teams, a couple of playoff victories, this is LA we're talking about, and unless the Clippers magically go on to win a championship (which I cannot see happening with Sterling) this topic shouldn't even be debatable. Because even if the Clippers manage to outplay the Lakers in a couple of years, everybody knows it will only be a matter of time before the Lakers return to the championship picture.

i thought game and 50 are cool now?