By all accounts, for all intents and purposes, the winner of the recent NBA lockout that cancelled nearly twenty regular season games were the owners, led by the league commissioner, David Stern.

They bullied the players into obtaining a significant bump in league revenue, and simultaneously managed to win the P.R. battle that caused many disgruntled fans to view the players as selfish primadonna millionaires who didn’t care about the sport they played. Their pretense for the latter was the perpetual whining about how the vast majority of teams were losing money and as a result, the small market teams were unable to compete with large-market teams for high-profile players.

For the owners, the proceedings of the past few months have been focused around the theme of accountability. Or rather, the corporate billionaires that lord over the NBA have preferred to cast the players as scapegoats for every mishap that has marred the league from a financial, competitive, and logistical standpoint.

The fact that Minnesota currently has three marquee power forwards and no explosive swingman? Blame the players. The fact that nobody in Atlanta is attending the games? Blame the players. The fact that Rashard Lewis has one of the top three largest contracts in basketball? Blame the players.

First of all, the fact that an owner like Portland’s Paul Allen has secured one of the exclusive yacht docks for the upcoming 2012 Olympic games should be proof enough that the small-market owners in this league are not suffering at all, and don’t deserve any sympathy from anybody.

But the problem with these small market owners is that they simply refuse to take responsibility for any of the mistakes they make. The flak of a bad signing gets redirected towards the player himself, even though the player is acting as any human being would act if offered these staggering amounts of money. The fact that a sloppily-managed team lacks the supporting stars to attract marquee players to remain with the team that drafted them becomes a full-fledged analysis into the player’s selfishness. A lack of foresight and common sense from management is downplayed to vilify athletes like Brandon Roy, who have put their bodies past the point of no return to serve the game of basketball.

So perhaps its fitting that one of the most vociferous objections to the blockbuster three-team deal that would have sent Chris Paul to the Lakers, Pau Gasol and cap space to the Rockets, and Lamar Odom, Goran Dragic, Kevin Martin, Luis Scola, a first round pick, and Zimbabwe to the Hornets was the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, Dan Gilbert. (And no, Zimbabwe was obviously not a part of the trade package; if it was, maybe the trade wouldn’t have been rescinded).

Gilbert put pressure on commissioner David Stern to rescind the trade with a harshly worded e-mail. His main point of contention, ironically enough, wasn’t that the trade would create a super team in Los Angeles, but rather that by making the trade, the Lakers would free up cap room for themselves and lower the amount of luxury tax they would have to pay to the rest of the league, including Gilbert’s Cavs.

Are you kidding me?

So, rather than admitting that you do not know how to run your Cavaliers team, as evinced by the fact that you pampered Lebron James for all seven years he played for you, only to watch him leave your team for nothing in return, you want to make the Los Angeles Lakers and their shrewd trade acumen responsible what is clearly your mess?

While David Stern has claimed that the owners had nothing to do with rescinding the trade, if this e-mail had even the slightest influence on his ludicrous decision, then it proves what many realized even before the negotiations got underway for the new collective bargaining agreement: the upper echelon of league management is too inept to turn a profit on a majority of its teams.

Even sadder than Gilbert’s e-mail, however, was the official statement from Stern, which declared the trade voided due to a purely “basketball decision.” According to Stern, the Hornets had more value in keeping Paul for 66 games and then losing him permanently than obtaining a twenty point scorer in Martin, a top notch replacement for David West in Scola, a rising star at the point guard position in Dragic (who would split time with the serviceable Jarrett Jack), the reigning sixth man of the year in Odom, and a first round draft pick, which makes you wonder if Stern needs to get his eyesight or his sanity examined.

Considering just how little leverage the Hornets had to begin with because of CP3’s primadonna attitude in preemptively indicating that he would sign a contract extension only with three teams, this was a tremendous haul for the Hornets to gain in return. Yes, the Lakers would have paired Kobe Bryant up with Chris Paul and Andrew Bynum (or possibly even Dwight Howard after potentially trading Bynum to Orlando), but by making this trade, the Lakers would be sacrificing all of their depth at the frontcourt, leaving them with only the mercurial Metta World Peace and an injury-prone, immature Bynum (who will be suspended for the first five games of the season due to his clothesline of Mavericks point guard J.J. Barea during the playoffs).

The offers from the Los Angeles Clippers (also a large market team) and the Golden State Warriors don’t even compare to this offer, and with the Knicks (also a large market team) signing Tyson Chandler, there is no way New York can trade for CP3 (and stop giving me this Amar’e for CP3 irrational pipe dream, folks. New Orleans didn’t want Amar’e). Simply looking around at the trade market for Paul, there is no reason for the Lakers to offer anything more than what they have offered. And Stern, if he wasn’t blinded by his personal vendetta against superstar players who dared to challenge his authority during the lockout, would realize that keeping Paul in New Orleans for the season would create a carbon copy of the 2010-2011 Cleveland Caveliers; something the poor citizens of New Orleans do not deserve.

As of Saturday, it appears as if the three-way trade to get Paul into purple and yellow will manage to work out, although with the arbitrary mandate from Stern that the Lakers be forced to offer even more talent in the form of draft picks/players to the Hornets. The reality is that by forcing the Lakers to part with more than they actually need to to acquire CP3 (according to CP3’s current trade market), Stern and his cronies are creating a dangerous precedent of micromanaging player acquisitions that not only completely tarnishes the legitimacy of the NBA as an institution, but goes against the very same principles of fair competitive balance that the league was apparently fighting so vehemently for during the recent lockout.