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The NBA league office tonight rejected the Lakers trade with New Orleans for star guard Chris Paul, after numerous owners objected. Now Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom are instead supposed to report to Lakers training camp on Friday. Odom wasn't happy about being traded, and after the deal was killed he sounded on Twitter as if he's in emotional limbo: "When a team trades u and it doesn't go down? Now what?" Now what, indeed.
ESPN's J.A. Adande: "Keep in mind, this is the same NBA that was willing to kill the entire season and trash interest in its product to get the financial deal it wanted. So it only make senses that, with that logic as a backdrop, the league would nix a trade that represented a pretty good solution to a bad situation for the team it owns. They just made the unappealing Chris Paul-in-New Orleans situation even worse."
Yahoo Sports: "NBA commissioner David Stern killed the New Orleans Hornets’ trade of Chris Paul after several owners complained about the league-owned team dealing the All-Star point guard to the Los Angeles Lakers, league sources told Yahoo! Sports ....Hornets general manager Dell Demps is 'disconsolate' over the heavy-handed move from the commissioner’s office, a source told Y! Sports. Demps considered resigning his job on Thursday, league sources said, and had to be talked out of it."