Does David Stern care about money or basketball

Tonight, a completed 3 team deal between the NBA owned New Orleans Hornets, the LA Lakers and Houston that would have sent Chris Paul to LA, Lamar Odom, Luis Scola, Kevin Martin, Goran Dragic and a 1st round pick to N.O. and Paul Gasol to Houston has been scrapped. Not because the teams couldn't agree to a sound trade that worked from a pure basketball perspective (Note: NBA says the trade was canceled for "basketball reasons"--that's absurd). Not because the trade didn't work under the new CBA cap rules. No it was stop because the NBA owners complained that the NBA owned N.O. team was allowed to trade their star.

I believe the owners stopped this deal in part because Paul was being traded to LA. Had he gone to Golden State, this deal proceeds. But more importantly, this deal was stopped purely because the league wants to drive up the cost of the team when the league attempts to sell them this year. Paul is going to leave this team. There is no way the N.O. front office will be able to conduct business behind this stunt. The team will never get another deal of this quality. Instead of making the basketball trade, the NBA, specifically Stern, made the money play. This is why the NBA fails. With stunts like this, its no better than WWE.

The NBA, where basketball doesn't matter.