The Chris Paul trade to the Los Angeles Lakers might not be dead after all. On Friday night, one day after the NBA nixed a three-way trade involving the New Orleans Hornets and Houston Rockets that would have brought Paul to Los Angeles for Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom, the NBA-owned Hornets can now pursue a new, revised CP3 deal.
"After the NBA office furnished New Orleans general manager Dell Demps with fresh directives on the kind of deal it would take to get approval from the league, Demps re-engaged the Lakers and Rockets in talks early Friday afternoon that carried deep into the evening, sources said," reported Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. "The three teams agreed to reconvene Saturday morning and believed they were within striking distance of a deal Demps could take to the league for its blessing."
Chris Broussard and Marc Stein of ESPN reported that under a revised deal the league would like "more youth or draft picks going to the Hornets."
NBA training camps around the league opened on Friday, which created an awkward situation in these three NBA cities with players who were traded in essence having to report back to their old teams after the deal was denied by commissioner David Stern. Paul showed up to camp in New Orleans, as Gasol did in Los Angeles. Odom, who expressed disappointment in being traded from L.A., was not expected to show up but eventually came to camp, 90 minutes late, then met with Mitch Kupchak briefly before leaving for the day.
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