Fi.
Nal.
Ly.
Chris Paul is being traded from the New Orleans Hornets to the Los Angeles Clippers -- for real this time -- and now we all can get on with our lives. Bravo for the beleaguered Clips, who get both their second superstar, to pair with Blake Griffin, and their moment in the spotlight in a market in which the mighty Lakers blot out the sun 99 percent of the time.
While Paul is both a superstar and a perfect complement to the high-flying Griffin, he doesn't come without warts. He has a bad knee, and that's a problem, especially for a 6-foot point guard; 7-footers can overcome stuff like this because their primary advantage, height, remains in force, but if a small guard loses a step, he immediately becomes much more ordinary.
Second, he's committed to the Clippers for only two years. He might very well sign on for three more after the season, but if Donald Sterling pulls his usual shenanigans, Paul also might decide this wasn't worth the trouble and threaten to bolt again.
Kirby Lee/US Presswire
Eric Gordon and Chris Kaman now take their skills to the Big Easy.
Nonetheless, it was a no-brainer for the Clippers to leverage their assets in a deal of this type, although they must wish they didn't have to leverage so many of them. The NBA, acting as legal guardian of the New Orleans Hornets, drove a hard bargain, ending up with the better of the two Erics (Eric Gordon) they haggled over as well as Chris Kaman, Al-Farouq Aminu and an unprotected 2012 first-round pick belonging to Minnesota.
Ultimately, I think this was basically a fair trade. Give the Clips a slight advantage since they got the blue chip and because this couldn't possibly have been a better fit -- L.A. has shooters galore around Paul and two dunkers in the middle to throw down his passes.
Nonetheless, New Orleans didn't come out badly. The Hornets will miss the playoffs this season, but they won't be terrible and have cleaned up their balance sheet nicely going forward.
As for the assets sent out for Paul, the package looks logical from here. Part of the reason the Clippers had to include Gordon, I suspect, is that the Minnesota pick might not be worth as much as people think. Despite all the half-witted things the Timberwolves have done the past few years, I have them projected as an almost-decent team in 2011-12. Thus, the Hornets might end up receiving more like a No. 11 pick than a coveted top-three selection.
Gordon, of course, is a prime asset, a potential All-Star shooting guard; you can't blame the Clippers for wanting to keep him and the Hornets for wanting him included. Had the Clips been able to insert Eric Bledsoe in Gordon's place, they might very well have won the Western Conference this season.
Now they won't, although they'll still be very good -- a solid playoff team. For the moment, some holes remain. They're badly in need of a defensive stopper on the wing and some backup frontcourt players; they likely will trade Mo Williams to solve one problem and use their two-year, $2.5 million "under-cap" exception to tackle the other. They need a coach, too, but that's a story for another day.
The Clippers also generated two small trade exceptions with this deal, one for $3.8 million and another for $2.5 million. Their size limits their effectiveness, but they could come in handy either now or at the trade deadline. (Those two 2015 second-rounders, by the way, are basically nonexistent junk that had to be included, per league rules, because this deal was effectively three separate trades: Paul for Kaman and the first-rounder, a junk second-rounder for Aminu and another junk pick for Gordon. One of the picks is from Memphis and has conditions so tight it will never get to the Hornets to give to the Clippers; the other is from the Hornets and has similar conditions).
The Hornets, meanwhile, can get on with their lives as well. Presumably they'll re-sign Carl Landry and possibly Willie Green and Jason Smith, as they're still well under the salary cap. Additionally, expect a trade of either Kaman or Emeka Okafor some time between now and the trade deadline.
Long term, the Hornets get a solid forward prospect in Aminu, a no-brainer keeper in Gordon and effectively two lottery picks -- the one the Clippers gave them and the one they'll get on their own now that Paul is gone. They'll almost certainly sign Gordon to an extension, but even so, the Hornets have max cap space going forward and a nice, clean balance sheet to present to potential buyers.
(And you'd better believe they'll have a buyer before June 28. Can you imagine the conspiracy theories if the NBA-owned Hornets won the lottery?)
So call it a win-win. The Clippers are more relevant than they've been in years, and will stay that way as long as Griffin's and Paul's knees remain intact.
The Hornets, meanwhile, get a second chance. The unwritten story behind the Paul trade is how badly the New Orleans franchise squandered the prime years of Paul and David West with a series of bloated contracts and bizarre decisions. Under new ownership and Dell Demps' management, they'll try to avoid repeating the same mistakes with Gordon, Aminu and their two 2012 lottery picks.
