Cry Baby Odom!

"Lamar Odom: When a team trades u and it doesn't go down? Now what? Twitter"

Now what? You report to camp because, as a player, you know it's a business. The Lakers gave you decent contracts while you've been on the team, but at some point in time everything comes to an end. Management must improve the team, and players are assets that help improve the team. I mean, Lamar Odom came aboard knowing it was Kobe's team...what did he think?

Lamar Odom is taking a cry baby attitude about what happened. As if though he was above being traded. How long has Odom been on the team? He came over in the Shaq deal, right? That's a long time. Does Lamar Odom think that the Lakers were going to allow him to retire a Laker? Where, pray tell, does that thought come from? Ignorance or arrogance.

If someone should be upset it's Chris Paul. But, after reading a twitter comment I can see the leagues position.

"Adrian Wojnarowski: League source on killed deal: "...(Stern) wasn't going to let Chris Paul dictate where he wanted to go." Twitter"

After what happened last season with Carmelo Anthony, and with the lock-out in the off-season; I can see the logic of the league. Things had gotten out of control to the point where it seemed that the players were running the league. Of course, this goes back to the LeBron James "decision," too. The players were exercising too much power. Or the agents. This is probably the league's way of saying that the owners are taking back control of the league.

During the lock-out, weren't the fans backing the owners? Well, this is the type of scenario that the owners were fed up with. But, I do believe the owners have misidentified the problem. It isn't that players can't manipulate the system to get to where they want to go. It's about letting them go if they can, but punishing teams for going over the luxury tax. That's why the owners wanted harsher penalties for luxury tax payers.

In other words: let Paul go to Los Angeles, but make it so that the Lakers have a very difficult time filling out the rest of their roster. That's the punishment. Not forbidding league stars to move from team to team. That's why the owners should have never abandoned the system issue of forbidding luxury tax paying teams from signing mid-level exception players. That was a perfect solution to the problem.

It's still in place with the idea of going 4 million over the luxury tax, and stiffer penalties kick in. But they should have disallowed it altogether. That way the 3 superstar roster model would be a flawed approach to winning a championship. That was the only system issue that really mattered. That little piece of basketball legislation would have solved the whole competitive balance problem.

I guess we can say that the players should have caved on the mid-level exception for luxury tax paying teams issue. That way Chris Paul could have manipulated the system to get to Los Angeles, and the league would have been happy because the Lakers would have been well into the luxury tax penalties and would have had difficulty filling the rest of the roster. But, since the players didn't cave on the mid-level exception issue, they are now being strong armed - clumsy comes to mind - by David Stern because somehow someway things aren't supposed to work out the way Chris Paul and his agent wanted it to work out. That's what the lock-out was all about.

Again, all this because the league and the players haven't figured out the full context of the new CBA - the 3 superstar roster model: big-market vs. the balanced roster model: small-market. And, of course, because of that, it leaves Lamar Odom feeling abandoned, and thinking of hanging it up and reporting to the Kardashians for the next phase of his career.

mike t.