The same Chris Paul that is hell-bent on destroying the franchise that did everything they could for him so he could ride the coat-tails of two OTHER overrated players to play for the most overrated franchise on earth?
Yeah, The Jazz blew that one.
Agree with the rest of what you're saying, but blaming Chris Paul for destroying the Hornets? The biggest problem for NO appears to be one of mass-apathy. Mr. Hagiography can't even get over 12,000 locals into the arena consistently. To say he destroyed that franchise is to give him too much credit.
Is he an arguable team-wrecker, rather than leader? Well, now the Deron comparison starts to work, doesn't it?
That team's problems are location, location, location. If anything, Chris Paul's Market concerns are shrewd, and understandable after playing for a team that no one cares about.
And the coda for all this is simply the players reacting to the NBA's manipulations in LA and Boston. Or, rather,
for those franchises back in 07/08.
LeBron-as-scapegoat is typical of media analysis of Big Business, and the recursive nature of it: always blaming effect while pretending there is no cause.
Everything from the New Orleans financial pit (numbers which match up nearly perfectly with the NBA's recent document-drops/press conference filler on aggregate losses) -- that the NBA now owns -- to the superteam trend being pursued by players, is actually the result of Stern's corruption.
If there was a mistake in not drafting Paul over Williams it wasn't skillset value or loyalty, but rather simple ability to lead: Deron appears to have none.
But one of the reasons Utah appeared to want the trade at all was simply an implicit acknowledgement of Deron's standard: they were not going to retain or build a roster that was contending.
So I agree that the Deron hatred -- coming from many of the people that supported him even after the Sloan coup -- is unwarranted in this context.
And there's the real epitaph-as-coda: Kirilenko is less-hated than Deron, was in some ways more valued by Jazz brass, and outlasted Sloan, Deron and Boozer. In other words, this thread is the type of world upside-down drivel that any committed Marxist, Russian or AK "fan" could be proud of.
