Metta World Peace: The NBA Offseason & Lockout Thread.

If Shane battier is really signing with Miami - that's really huge for them. Perfect complement to this team and as some of y'all know one of my favorite players. He really improves their chances.

Spo will put him on the other team's best player, allowing Wade and James to roam and go nuts on blocks. It's gonna be crazy.

OTOH, Duke players are cursed and never win NBA championships. So there's that.

Wow you're right - Danny Ferry broke the drought for Coach K, but that's it.

Seriously - be careful what you wish for. Shane is just about as an ideal player for this team as I can think of -outside a solid big man.

Chris Paul to Lakers for Odom and Gasol (with Rockets then taking Gasol for Scola and others) all but done.

Damnit, I did *not* want to see the Lakers abandon the triangle and then pick up the best PG in the league. So much for floundering.

Seriously? They have that much faith in Bynum? Seems nuts to me - Gasol was their best player during the finals.

And what happened to Paul's knees being effed? I'm surprised teams aren't more worried about that. I'll be honest - I think this is not that smart a move. And it's going to be hard for me to hate Paul like I hate all Lakers.

I think your biggest need is finding a taker for Boozers contract. What a disaster.

Wow - league killed the Paul deal.

Odom, too, took to Twitter to share his feelings: "When a team trades u and it doesn't go down? Now what?"

Nobody hates the Lakers more than I but this seems truly unfair. Lakers were giving up plenty. I get that the league owns the Hornets but now the owners have a say in trades like this is fantasy basketball or something?

I am not that angry about Stern crushing the CP3 trade. Paul's a great player but his knee??? There will be other PGs around eventually. We get to keep Gasol and Odom (unless we package him in the Howard deal too).

We already have a player who's really good when healthy but not healthy often, we don't need another one.

Errr.. you show up to training camp and do your job for which you get paid millions?

Um - yeah, no. Venting is one thing but let's not get carried away.

This morning has been crazy! With this ongoing saga and with free agency in baseball, we may have finally reached the point in American sports where the offseason moves are as interesting if not more so than the actual sport.

There are some big, big problems though with the league's actions. Because it is a very clear conflict of interest and it stinks more than before of Stern being at the helm for way too long. The owners all paid for the team, and the league runs it. There was always a problem there - and the league had the Hornets GM act as 'business as usual'. But the moment an influential player is on the block and a move is made, some of the other owners, led by Gilbert, band together to nix it, and Stern vetoes it.

So basically, Stern castrated his own GM and succombed to pressure from some of the other owners. Parity is one thing, but this also sets a horrific precedent for the league and questions whether or not the Hornets should even be allowed to operate. This doesn't look good for the NBA, nevermind that the pieces of the trade seemed to be on the level. Vetoing the trade though certainly isn't. The owners will act in the best interest of their teams, not the Hornets. That's the NBA's job... and there-in lies a good part of the conflict and the foul odor that has so many people up in arms about the integrity of the sport now (or more than usual). The other thing that absolutely wreaks is that (this) went public.

Either way, I agree that the offseason is actually now more interesting than the regular season. I think at the end of the day though, the real loser in this is going to be Dan Gilbert as long as he wants to own the Cavaliers. Because if I was blessed enough to have the talent to be an influential player, there's no way I'd want to play on that guy's team. I might if I was a scrub without a choice, but otherwise... that guy whines and whines and his attitude towards the players is something else, to say the least. To me, it seems he really does view them as nothing more than property.