President Barack Obama makes remarks at service event with 2010 NBA Champion Los Angeles Lakers at the THEARC Boys and Girls Club in Washington, District of Columbia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Fans of the Los Angeles Lakers have good reason to dislike David Stern after what he did to them by nixing the Chris Paul trade, but it was the results of the 2012 NBA draft lottery on Wednesday night that gave the rest of the league a reason to join them.
This comes in the wake of the New Orleans Hornets winning the first pick in the 2012 NBA Draft despite having just a 13.7 percent chance of doing so. There is plenty of skepticism going around that Stern and the NBA had something to do with the Hornets obtaining that pick and effectively winning the Anthony Davis sweepstakes. The NBA still owns the team, thus perpetuating this fundamental problem. Even though it's unlikely that there was actually any attempt by the league to fix the draft, there remains a modicum of doubt.
It's not completely unfounded, though.
Yahoo! Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski reported that several league executives felt that there were too many signs of deception to completely ignore the possibility of a fix. When professionals that deal in league matters for a living have suspicions, fans have every right to hold their own reservations.
For Lakers fans, they have to be wondering just how good the team could be today if they had Paul and Kobe Bryant in the backcourt along with a healthy Andrew Bynum at center. For fans outside of Los Angeles, the spirit of the vetoed trade was at the very least unsettling.
The trade that never was hurt the team and the league more than anyone could have imagined. Not only did the Lakers fail to acquire a major upgrade at a position it desperately needed, but also lost its Sixth Man of the Year in Lamar Odom for essentially nothing -- the pick acquired in the trade to the Dallas Mavericks was later given to Cleveland in the deal for Ramon Sessions.
The Lakers now are stuck in a situation where they are over the salary cap and luxury tax threshold with no virtually no money for free agency. With Paul, the team would have had a legitimate future and heir-apparent to Bryant. Now, the team has no first round pick in one of the deepest drafts in recent memory. Ironically, depth is exactly what the Lakers need in order to improve.
This is why fans in Los Angeles have every right to be crying foul after the results of the draft. Even if the argument itself is somewhat of a stretch, it's understandable.
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