Luka Dealt to Lakers: Nico Harrison is a Basketball Terrorist

[hakeemfaan]

Any assertion that the NBA/Silver could (and might) stop a trade for non-CBA reasons is pure nonsense.

The league operates within the limits of negotiated and bargained-for, very well-defined, and fully-enforceable legal agreements, and the NBA itself (ie, Silver the Commissioner) does not have the power some think it does. The CBA with the players, the Covenants and ByLaws with the individual owners, etc, define the NBA's power, and those would be violated (and make the league subject to MASSIVE lawsuits) if they rejected a trade for any reason other than it failed to conform with the written, negotiated trade rules.

The Chris Paul trade is often cited as a precedent of the league voiding a trade for arbitrary reasons, but it was not. The NBA did not step in and reject that deal (even though many mistakenly believed that was what happened). Instead, it was the ownership of NO who decided they did not want to do it.

The Lakers won this trade because they were smart and eager to take advantage of the stupidness of Nico, and because Nico is a buffoon as a GM, a naive non-expert thinking he's smarter and wiser than he actually is. He has no clue how to evaluate player value and negotiate to win a deal. LA saw a sucker and suckered him. And because we have a foolish Mavs ownership group who stupidly gave the control of the Mavs to such an idiot who was so stupid as to get suckered like that.

It is your opinion vs my opinion. A league will do what’s best for its interests. I didn’t say there was an official rule in place. There was no official rule in place to force out Sterling either. They bundled it under a some vague overarching rule and later settled with him out of court. I also know exactly what happened in the CP3 deal and how the circumstances were different. I noted that in my post.