David Stern further expounded on his controversial decision to veto a trade in 2011 for "basketball reasons" that would have seen the New Orleans Pelicans trade Chris Paul to the Los Angeles Lakers.

The Pelicans and Lakers agreed upon a three-way trade with the Houston Rockets involving Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom.

"(My decision) was only based on what was good for New Orleans, or what was not good for New Orleans," said David Stern. "It had nothing to do with the Lakers at all. And in fact, in the course of the weekend, we thought we could re-do the deal. We really thought that Houston would be ready to part with Kyle Lowry; and we had a trade lined up for Odom that would have gotten us a good first round draft pick. Not we, but my basketball folks. But Mitch Kupchak at the time panicked, and moved Odom to Dallas. So the piece wasn’t even there for us to play with at the time. So that was it — just about what was good for the then New Orleans Hornets."

New Orleans soon thereafter traded Paul to the Los Angeles Clippers.