Blake Griffin, Eric Gordon and Chris Paul: The Big Three That Never Was

Imagine the following scenario:

The Lion King play is in town for a month-long run, and you’re trying to get tickets as a Christmas present for your four-year-old daughter, who is obsessed with Simba and company.

The show has been sold out for months and prices in the secondary market are ridiculously high and way more than you are willing to spend.  I’m talking like more than double-the-face-value high.

You turn to Craigslist and find a private party looking to unload his tickets the day of the show.  He asks $250 for both.  You offer $150 and are perfectly content to walk away if the deal doesn’t happen.  You like the presents you plan on getting your daughter and while this would be a great upgrade, it would only be so if it came at the right price. 

Anyway, let’s say the dude was insistent on the $250.  You decline and calmly break down what you see his options being:  He could take a very respectable offer from you (the face value of the tickets are $140), he could wait for another buyer to emerge, he could sell them right before the show started and get much less from someone else, assuming he could even find another buyer at that point, or he could not sell the tickets and end up with nothing.   

He agrees to the deal.  You immediately inform your daughter, who goes nuts with excitement at the fact that you are adding the Lion King to your Christmas.  After a few minutes, however, you get a phone call.  It’s the seller’s father.  He tells you the tickets belong to the whole family and while he had fully empowered his son to sell them on their behalf, a few relatives started complaining about the selling price so he is killing the deal.

Now let’s say he contacts your rival next door and offers to sell him the tickets.  As it turns out, the seller’s family and your neighbor are in business together but the seller’s father is the boss.  Your neighbor had previously told you he would also love to take his kid to the play but, like you, was only willing to pay $150.  Any more and it would potentially negatively affect his family’s overall Christmas experience, which actually looked promising for the first time in many years.

You don’t know what his boss tells him, but two hours before the show, with no one else interested in buying them and over his own wife’s objections, your neighbor buys the tickets for $300. 

Wouldn't that seem odd to you? 

When I first heard the news that Chris Paul was headed to the Clippers, I immediately turned into an emotional powder keg whose fuse was just lit. 

I stood up and waited to hear the two words that would cause me to explode and sure enough, I heard them. 

"Eric Gordon." 

BOOM!  I was furious. 

Let's get something straight: I am not even a Clippers fan.  I follow the Lakers and was ecstatic when they traded for Chris Paul and equally as upset when the deal was overturned. 

But, being from Southern California, I have no ill will towards the Clippers and, in fact, was actually rooting for them to get Chris Paul while at the same time applauding their steadfast refusal to include Gordon in the deal.  And seriously, why should they?  Recent events had ensured that the Hornets had NO OTHER TEAM to deal with and were faced with a very simple reality: take what the Clippers offered, by all accounts a good package of young players with upside (Eric Bledsoe and Al-Farouq Aminu), a likely lottery pick in a loaded draft and cap flexibility in the form of former All-Star Chris Kaman), take much less later at the trade deadline in a fire sale or watch Paul grind through the season with the castoffs the Hornets had assembled before leaving while they get absolutely nothing in return.  That's it. Those were their options. 

So how, you wonder, were they able to extract Eric Gordon from the Clippers despite being in such an undeniable position of weakness?  How else?  David Stern.  Not David Stern, acting as GM of the Hornets, who just happen to be owned by the league.  No, I'm talking about NBA commissioner David Stern, who holds sway over all that happens in his league. 

Seriously, with Stern handling the negotiations could there have been a bigger conflict of interest?  Do you honestly think Neil Olshey, the Clippers GM, could negotiate with Stern like he could any other GM? 

Put it this way: If any other GM in that position kept insisting on Gordon as part of the package, Olshey would've laughed him out of the room, and rightfully so.  But could he do that with Stern without any fear of repercussions down the road?  Could anyone? 

Is it possible that Stern may have some way used his power as commissioner to strong-arm the Clippers into giving them what he wanted so he could make the Hornets more valuable to a potential buyer?  Or to force the kind of control over his players he failed to achieve during collective bargaining?  I’m struggling to come up with another scenario that makes more sense.  The only one remotely possible is that the Clippers truly are THAT stupid to negotiate against themselves and while for much of the past 30 years you'd get no argument from me for making that claim, that scenario simply doesn't hold water in 2011. 

Olshey has proven himself a competent executive and I can't wrap my head around how he could've possibly just given away one of the top-five shooting guards in the league when he absolutely didn't have to.  And if you don’t think Gordon is that good, you weren’t watching him play last season before he injured his wrist.   

Make no mistake, I liked the Paul trade only if it would've teamed him with Blake Griffin AND Gordon.  If it worked, you'd be looking at a juggernaut for years to come.  If it didn't, you can still build around Griffin and Gordon. 

I also liked the Clippers if they simply walked away.  Gordon and Griffin, cap space in 2012 for a marquee free agent (say, Chris Paul, perhaps???) and a likely lottery pick in a draft that looks to be loaded. Staying THAT course could also build the aforementioned juggernaut and set up the Clippers, yes the Clippers, to dominate the 'teens.  But trading Gordon AND Minnesota's pick for Paul leaves you no recourse.  If Paul doesn't play up to his potential and/or stay healthy, or they fail to build around him and Griffin, then they risk losing both Paul AND Griffin in two years since Paul only agreed to pick up his 2012-2013 option and Griffin has yet to sign an extension and probably won't if Paul doesn't re-up and/or this doesn’t work. 

That's why this deal defied all logic to me.

Which brings me back to Stern. 

A lot of people, myself included, expressed their outrage (and rightfully so) when Stern killed the Lakers deal.  But nobody seems to be talking about how the Clippers deal suddenly happened when the team had previously said over and over that Gordon was not available.

If there is something amiss here, I can only hope the truth will come out eventually.  It always seems to these days.  Then again, based on all the gushy reaction pieces I've been reading these past two weeks, it doesn't seem anyone out there is looking for it.  They are too starry-eyed over the romantic thought of Paul throwing glorious half-court alley-oops to a soaring Griffin who will throw them down to the delight of the sold out Staples Center and its delirious, long-suffering Clipper fans.  They are too busy with thoughts of a championship parade through downtown L.A. with red and blue confetti, as opposed to purple and gold, raining from the sky for a change.  And that may yet happen.  The season is young. 

Of course, with 64 more games scheduled in 118 days, and Paul with his surgically-repaired left knee and no Gordon to help take the scoring and defensive pressure off him, it may not.  But what definitely will NOT happen is Clipper fans seeing the absolute magic that Griffin, Gordon and Paul would’ve made on the court together.  Talk about a "Big Three."  Instead we are left to wonder what might have been.  And for a league that is becoming rapidly dependent on star-driven teams, and for a franchise so mired in mediocrity for 30 years, that is the real shame in all this.