Dear David Stern and Dan Gilbert,

Many things have been and can be said about you both, but from what I witnessed Thursday in the blocking of a 3 team trade proves most of what has been said is true. I will start with David Stern… I understand you are employed by the owners and I would like to think you have the best interest of the NBA in mind. However, you have shown your EAST COAST bias and you have shown that you do not the best interest of the NBA in mind. What you have shown is a general lack of understanding what this trade would do for a small, medium and large market team. You have shown a gross mismanagement of your job title and even more so you have shown that you will be bullied around by a few owners that have no business running teams. Let me break this down so everybody understands.

The Lakers would send Pau Gasol to the Houston Rockets and Lamar Odom to the New Orleans Hornets.
The Houston Rockets would send Goran Dragic, Kevin Martin, Luis Scola and draft picks to the Hornets.
New Orleans would send Chris Paul to the Lakers.

Let me continue to break this down. Chris Paul will leave at seasons end, and he asked to be traded this year so the Hornets would not be left with nothing. The Hornets would have put a very good team on the court in Kevin Martin, a lights out shooter, Goran Dragic, a ball of fire with great court vision and Luis Scola an effective forward/center, draft picks to pull in young athletic guys, and Lamar Odom, the best 6th man in the league. So now you will leave the Hornets with nothing, not even a draft pick or a bench player will be added.

The Rockets gain an all star big man in Gasol and free up a few million in cap space so they can try to pull in a few free agents. They are under a rebuilding mode and this is a great move for them.

The Lakers free up cap space and add a young point guard, a position they need to fill.

All 3 teams get what they need and want. The big winners would have been the Hornets, yet David Stern wants to keep them from rebuilding and in the end has shattered any chance of the Hornets putting together a team that can compete. He has set the Hornets organization back 5 years with this move. His hopes, in my opinion was to keep the Lakers, and the WEST from forming teams like he has on the EAST. Miami has Bosh, Wade and James, Celtics have Rondo, Garnet, Pierce and Paul, the Knicks have Stoudimire and Anthony, yet the WEST has no team set up like any team in the EAST. One could argue the Lakers have Bryant, Gasol, Bynum and Odom…However, the team the Lakers court is much older than any of those dream teams on the EAST. I certainly hope Mr. Stern is proud of himself and pats himself on the back. He has hurt 3 teams from getting better, 3 teams from moving players that help the teams they will be moving to and in the end he has sealed his fate as the worst Commissioner in NBA history.

Moving on to Dan GIlbert… You sir, are an idiot. You had a chance to trade Lebron before he left, you had a chance to bring in big players to play around him and failed and you have repeatedly shown your inability to run a team. Rather  than spending your time writing letters to David Stern and to Lebron, maybe your next letter should be to the fans in Cleveland and apologize for giving them so much false hope. You landed a good coach, solid draft picks and yet I’m 100% positive you will find a way to ruin it. Maybe you are blind, maybe you are jaded by your own ego, or maybe you are just not a very smart basketball mind. I’m betting a little of each. I’m not sitting here proclaiming I have all the answers, but I do have most. If I ran your team for the past 4 years the city of Cleveland would have had a ring by now and YES it would have been without Lebron James. You are a failure of an owner and need to learn to keep your mouth shut. You bought a small market team, in a city that nobody really wants to live in, you bought a team that has so much promise and yet you fail over and over and over again. I’m starting to think Lebron did the right thing by leaving, and I don’t think it was to get away from the city as much as it was to get away from you. I am confident that I could run your team better than you, I’m confident 99% of the population could run the Cavs better than you.

You Mr. Gilbert and you Mr. Stern are what is wrong with the NBA, an incompetent commissioner and cry baby owner. Maybe it’s time for David Stern to retire and it’s no doubt time for somebody that understands basketball to take over the Cavs. Mark Cuban…. you need to keep your mouth shut too. You are another owner that likes to cry about every little thing that doesn’t go your way. You can’t even keep your championship team together, worry about your own matters.

Thanks for Nothing,
Joshua L. Ott III