Mark Cuban upset about Hornets-Kings trade
With the Carmelo Anthony and Deron Williams trades dominating NBA news, not much attention was paid to the deal between New Orleans and Sacramento. Except for Mark Cuban.
The Dallas Mavericks owner is protesting the trade because it increases the payroll of the financially strapped Hornets, who were purchased by the NBA earlier this season in a $300 million bailout move. Cuban's dissent also likely is motivated by the possibility his team could face New Orleans in the first round of the playoffs.
The deal sends forward Carl Landry to New Orleans in exchange for second-year guard Marcus Thornton and cash considerations. Landry's $3 million salary is about $2.25 million more than Thornton's.
Said Cuban to NBA.com:
"That's just wrong. That's just wrong. That's just absolutely, positively wrong. I'll probably go against the grain from everybody else, but that is so far wrong that it's not even close.
"There's so few teams in the league that can afford to do that and yet we're allowing a team that's owned by the league to do that?"
With the rest of the NBA owners funding the Hornets, Cuban added that, "I don't need to be competing economically with the league and myself."