The CP3 deal is off. According to Woj, owners have pressured David Stern into killing the Lakers' trade for Chris Paul. It's over. Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom are still Lakers.

Needless to say, this is super bizarre and grotesquely shady. When the league took over ownership of the Hornets David Stern emphasized that they'd be allow to operate autonomously, without interference from the league office. That's been exposed as total nonsense. He's on a short leash being yanked by owners whose teams will suck forever and therefore have no choice but to drag the smart and successful down to their level.

This is a deep stain on Stern's reign as commissioner. He got bullied by small-market owners into prolonging the lockout, and they just did it to him again. His stewardship of the sport is a bad joke. It's time for him to go.

I don't understand how the players' union can be OK with this. They fought a four-month lockout and lost 16 games' worth of paychecks to preserve the right of players to move between teams, including by trade. Now the commissioner is facilitating collusion among owners to block fairly negotiated deals.

Dr. Buss, rise from your hospital bed. It's time for your terrible swift vengeance.

I just love the lockout, don't you?

When we last saw the Lakers' defense, it was getting annihilated by the Dallas Mavericks and looking very much like something that needs to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up. The Laker front office appeared to share this opinion when it hired Mike Brown as the new head coach. Say what you will about the Cavaliers' offensive foibles under Brown, but his Cavs were excellent on D, and Brown's reputation as a defensive strategist par excellence was the one thing even those of us most skeptical of his hiring were forced to concede. And I think we've all been looking forward to seeing what schematic adjustments he's got up his sleeve to get the Laker D back to championship form.

Until now. Because apparently, Mike Brown won't be making any changes at all to the Laker defense. The same system that struggled for long stretches last season and got blown apart by Dallas? Mike's good with it. No changes needed, except maybe he'll yell at guys a little more than Phil did. This exciting news comes from assistant coach Chuck Person, who today brought the LA Times' Mark Medina up to speed on the thinking of the Lakers' newly installed brain trust.

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If you weren't in Watts today, this is what you missed.

There ain't much in the way of news regarding the Los Angeles Lakers on the horizon, but today brings merriment of an altogether different sort.  News broke this morning that the Golden State Warriors will hire Mark Jackson to be their next head coach, and considering how little we care about who coaches the Golden State Warriors, this literally could not have worked out better for us all.  Consider the following positive implications of this hire to Laker Nation

Mark Jackson will no longer be an analyst for the network that owns rights to the marquee NBA games (in which the Lakers just so happen to participate ... often).  Really, this deserves its own paragraph, and since I'm still writing this, I have the power to make that happen.  Jackson's analytical stylings are like a cross between Hubie Brown and Scotty Brooks, except if you were to remove any indication whatsoever that the speaker has ever even seen the game of basketball.  No more phrases that make no sense within the context of basketball, like "Mama, there goes that man".  No more phrases that make no sense within the context of the english language, like "Hand down, man down"  Really, it is impossible to get excited enough about this.

Here are some other reasons:

• The Lakers are now virtually guaranteed not to have made the worst coaching hire this offseason.  I'm not saying this was ever a real possibility, but plenty of us have questioned the logic behind the Mike Brown hire.  Still, the man does have pedigree, having served under Gregg Popovich.  Mark Jackson has served under ... I don't know.  The Hamburgler?  Snuffleupagus?  What's Dora the Explorer's track record as a head coach?
• Jeff Van Gundy will no longer have anybody willing to rise to the bait of his ridiculous statements on pop culture, meaning they will implode upon themselves and fizzle.  On second thought, this may cause JVG to create pop culture black holes that will consume us all, so lets hope some other team ends up offering him a job as well.

Submit more reasons for celebration on this joyous day in the comments.

Last night's 86-85 loss to the Utah Jazz left Laker Nation in dire need of a little levity.  It was a disgusting display of professional basketball, from a team that has quite recently shown to be as capable as any team in the league, and I'd be saying all these things whether the team had won or lost.  So we'll be taking a humor break from our normal game breakdowns, analysis and previews.  And what better place to turn to for a good laugh than Laker Nation's resident punching bag, Luke Walton.

Let's get one thing straight.  I do not hate Luke Walton.  I'm actually rather fond of him.  I remember his rookie year as a lost soul on a team full of future Hall of Famers, how he seemed to be the only guy on the whole team both willing and able to make an entry pass into Shaquille O'Neal.  I remember when Luke suddenly developed a highly effective back to the basket game from 10 feet.  I remember when he decided it would be cool to start passing the ball through legs (his own and other people's) and started doing it at least once game.  I also feel for Luke.  I think it sucks that he's lost time over the past two seasons for an injury that can not be properly diagnosed or treated.  I think it's terrible that we can accurately describe Luke's 2010 season with the statement "Luke Walton missed 53 games due to a broken family tree" or that the phrase "Luke will be out six weeks because he's a Walton" makes sense.  And I love Luke Walton, if for no other reason than that he seems to be my own personal comedic muse.  So Luke, if by chance these words ever reach your eyes, know that I mean you no harm.  Please consider the following like your own personal roast.

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Last night, the Los Angeles Lakers put a prodigious beatdown on the Dallas Mavericks, winning by a final tally of 110-82.  While the game was an impressive display on the part of the defending champs, the result played second fiddle to the raucous events that went down in the 4th quarter.  With 9:22 left in the game, Steve Blake drove the lane and was fouled by Jason Terry, who proceeded to help Blake find the courtside photographers with a two-handed shove in the back.  Blake (rightfully) took offense, and got in Terry's face.  As the two were quickly separated by one of the refs on hand, Matt Barnes flew in to deliver a healthy shove of his own to Terry.  The rest of both teams, all three refs, and the Dallas coaching staff (this all went down on their side of the court) intervened to avoid any further shenanigans.  Terry, Blake, and Barnes were all ejected from the game, as was Brendan Haywood because he was ... I don't know, too tall. Then, with tensions already high and the refs at Defcon 4, Shannon Brown decided to take exception to an overly hard foul on Pau Gasol with 1:52 left in the contest, delivering a shove to fouler Brian Cardinal, earning himself the opportunity to join his benchmates in the locker room ahead of schedule.   It was quite the nightcap for a contest that was losing interest fast, but its hardly the first NBA dustup to go down.  There may be a couple lingering suspensions, but that's where the story ends.  Or does it?

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In theory, there are ways this could've been more embarrassing. The Lakers could've lost this badly, say, in Cleveland instead of Charlotte. Kwame Brown could've celebrated the Bobcats' 20-point win by throwing a birthday cake in Luke Walton's grill. Or the Lakers could've all forgotten to wear shorts and been forced to stand at center court while the Bobcats' cheerleaders pointed and laughed. Barring these scenarios, though, tonight really could not have unfolded any more disastrously for the Lakers, who got their skulls caved in by Charlotte, 89 to 109. Just like that, we have a promising new candidate for Worst Loss of the Season.

We knew the Lakers were going to be dragging a bit in this one. They've been on the road for a while now, they played just yesterday in Orlando, and Kobe Bryant was ill this afternoon with flu symptoms. But none of this excuses what they did tonight, which is quit. They fell behind by a little in the second quarter, then by more in the third, and when it became apparent that things weren't going their way, they clocked out. They gave up any pretense of competing or defending and invited the Bobcats to run a 12-minute layup drill in the fourth. It goes into the books as just one loss, the same as any other, but anyone who watched the second half understands that it was different. This was straight up surrender.

And to think, I stood up your mom on Valentine's Day to watch this nonsense. How will I ever learn to love again?

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