Dwight Howard to Nets: NBA Would Look Terrible Allowing D12 Trade

The NBA would look even more terrible than it does now if commissioner David Stern were to allow Dwight Howard to be traded to the New Jersey Nets after he killed a trade on Thursday night that would have sent Chris Paul to the Los Angeles Lakers.

If Stern killed the deal for the Lakers because it looked like a large market such as Los Angeles was taking advantage of a small market, then the Howard deal should not be allowed to go through, either.

Yahoo! Sports writer Adrian Wojnarowski wrote the following regarding the killed three-team trade involving Paul in an article updated Friday:

"

"A chorus of owners were irate with the belief that the five-month lockout had happened largely to stop big-market teams from leveraging small-market teams for star players pending free agency."

"

The new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) that came out of the prolonged NBA lockout did not do enough to help small market teams.

The players still have the power. If players want to be traded to certain destinations, it hurts their team's ability to get the most value for them.

Controlling the top-dollar players is something the owners will never be able to do. It does not matter what clauses were put into the new CBA to help small-market teams, because superstar players will always have a say in where they go.

Stern felt the pressure from the owners regarding the Paul trade and acted, wrongly. Now he has set a precedent, and it is a dangerous one. How are superstars supposed to move after this Paul trade was killed? 

If Howard goes to New Jersey and the league allows it, then how is Stern going to answer to the cries from Lakers fans as to why was Howard allowed to leave to a large market but Paul was not?

The league cannot afford to let Howard leave, and not only is that unfair to him, it is quite unfair to the Magic.

It's pretty clear that Howard will not sign an extension in Orlando, and if the team does not trade him for players and/or draft picks they will not be able to rebuild for the future.

Orlando is a small market and in the proposed deal that would see them ship Howard and Hedo Turkoglu to New Jersey, the Magic would acquire center Brook Lopez and two first-round picks. 

Three first-round picks in a draft that is very deep and full of talent is an awesome return for Orlando, but so was the Hornets' return for Paul, and that trade was killed. 

The NBA would look terrible allowing Howard to leave Orlando for New Jersey after refusing to let the Paul deal go through, and with all the backlash following Stern's bold decision, the league cannot afford to make a bigger mess than the one is has already made.

Nicholas Goss is an NBA Featured Columnist at Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter.

Follow @NicholasGoss35