Chris Paul to Los Angeles Clippers: David Stern Made a Mistake

When I heard the news that David Stern bullied yet another person into submission, I couldn't help but think back to the scene in Casino Royale when Daniel Craig sits down to play the bad guy (Mads Mikkelsen) in poker.

The scene is so eerily familiar to how the Clippers' trade with the Hornets, er, NBA, went down.

In the movie, Bond is ordered to take part in a poker game with known terrorists to keep one particular bad guy (Le Chiffre) from winning. Bankrolled by MI6, Bond buys into the game with a decent amount of chips. But, he's not alone. All the other terrorists have considerable assets as well.

Bond is undaunted and slowly but surely increases his position in the game. He gets to the final round but ultimately is knocked out. During a tense moment of high Hollywood drama, it looks like Bond is finished. 

By pure happenstance, one of the other players is a CIA counterpart who agrees to bankroll Bond and get him back into the sweepstakes.

This time, Bond plays his hand well, corners Le Chiffre and beats him with a ridiculously improbable royal flush.

His fatal flaw? He doesn't go for the kill. He's got the bad guy's money, has (somewhat impossibly) killed three henchmen during intermission and has enough to indict the guy and put him away for life. 

He's won, but he lets Le Chiffre walk away.

In doing so, he gives Le Chiffre the second chance that he never deserved. Naturally, Le Chiffre comes back and sets a trap for Bond as he speeds off from Montenegro. On a dark rural highway, Craig narrowly avoids hitting his Bond-girl/lover Eva Green (who is tied in a chair in the middle of the road), flips his Lamborghini and (somewhat impossibly) survives.

What happens next? The bad guy comes back and starts torturing Bond in a secluded farmhouse. 

The part where the bad guy wails on Bond's exposed privates with a 10-pound weight on a rope? That is what David Stern just did to Donald Sterling and the Clippers. 

Sadly, it didn't have to be that way for Sterling. Like Bond after he beat the bad guy in poker, the Clippers were in complete control. 

Sterling had all the poker chips, had all Sterling's money and had the public's support had he chosen to bury the commissioner. All he had to do was walk away. He knew it wasn't a good deal. He knew Stern was desperate and that if a deal wasn't sealed, Stern's reputation would be forever ruined and he knew he held all the chips. Instead, he allowed Stern to bully him and convince him that somehow he had the weaker hand.

If it wasn't Donald Sterling, it would have been shocking. But Sterling has never be one to make the rational team-improving trade.

In the end, the Clippers got their man and will have an explosive and special tandem that will dazzle fans. But it came at a crippling price, a price the Clippers never had to pay and a price that will keep the Clippers from being great.

To Stern's credit, he bluffed perfectly. Either he was able to convince the league's worst owner that he wasn't desperate and that the Clippers weren't the only real trading partner, or he simply bullied Sterling into submission. 

The Clippers will be fun to watch with Paul and Griffin, but unlike James Bond, they won't bounce back. Unlike Bond, they won't make it out of the barn in Montenegro. They will be a bruised and beaten form of what could have been a brawny and rugged team.

By giving away Kaman, Eric Gordon and Minnesota's unprotected number one, the Clippers gave away depth up front and one of, if not the best, shooting guards under 30 in the league. 

They replaced Gordon with Paul, who happens to play the only position where they have depth. Given that Paul will play major minutes, how are the Clippers supposed to get Chauncey Billups on the court and how are they going to develop Bledsoe (who might now never see the court)? Caron Butler is 31 and coming off a torn patella tendon and their new starting SG has bottomed out at 9.8 points per game after a three-year decline in production.

Unless the Clippers make a trade (which seems too logical for a Donald Sterling owned team), the Clippers are going to go up against Pau and Marc Gasol, Tim Duncan, Andrew Bynum, Al Jefferson and now Chris Kamaan, with who?

DeAndre Jordan and Trey Thompkins? They better hope Jordan grows up fast. 

Good luck Mr. Sterling, but you are no James Bond. It looks like the bad guy is actually going to win this one.