A 2011 failed trade that involved Chris Paul heading to the Golden State Warriors in exchange for the duo of Stephen Curry and Kay Thompson has recently been the talk of the town.
Paul, who at that time was with the New Orleans Hornets, admitted that this blockbuster deal was almost done, and that he ultimately turned it down because he didn't want to play in San Francisco — or so he says. On the other hand, then-Warriors general manager Larry Riley recently denied that Golden State ever had these trade conversations.
Whatever the case may be, we all know that this deal never actually happened. Paul ended up heading to the Los Angeles Clippers, while Curry and Thompson evolved into becoming the core of a Warriors dynasty a few years later.
Still, it's fun to imagine what could have happened if this trade actually came to fruition.
Warriors
It is currently unimaginable to think that the Warriors were willing to give up both Curry and Thompson in any trade deal. Curry has become the face of the franchise, and there certainly would have been no dynasty without him.
Nonetheless, at that time, it seemed like a pretty good deal. The Warriors were going to get a bona-fide superstar in Paul, who was in his prime at 26 years of age. They would have paired him with All-Star big man David Lee, and perhaps they wouldn't have traded Monta Ellis to the Milwaukee Bucks. That would have been a pretty solid core, which would have significantly improved the standing of the Warriors in the West (they had won a combined 55 games in the previous two seasons).
However, would Paul have been able to make the Warriors a championship-caliber side? He probably had a shot, but we're leaning more toward no for that one. Plus, as he even mentioned, he might not have stuck around anyway.
Hornets/Pelicans
Now this is where it gets most interesting. Without a doubt, the Hornets (they became the Pelicans in 2013) would have been the biggest winners of this trade — assuming of course that both Curry and Thompson took the same path they did with the Warriors.
However, what makes this even more intriguing is what could have happened a year after these two came on board.
First, let's take a look at how the Hornets and Warriors actually fared in the 2011-12 campaign. New Orleans finished last in the West with a 21-45 record, while Golden State didn't do too well themselves, finishing with 23 wins and 43 losses.
Given this scenario, it would probably be safe to assume that even with a young Curry and Thompson on their team, the Hornets would not have done significantly better than they actually did. Curry dealt with ankle injury problems that season and Thompson was just a rookie.
Entering the lottery for the 2012 NBA Draft, the Hornets only had a 13.7% chance of securing the first overall pick. Theoretically, a few more wins would have decreased their chances, but not by much. New Orleans ended up being the big winners of that lottery, bagging the first overall pick. There were four teams ahead of them odds-wise (the Charlotte Bobcats, who finished the season with a 7-59 record, had a 25.0% chance of winning the first pick), so there's no denying that Lady Luck was smiling at the Hornets on that evening.
Again, under the assumption that New Orleans still got extremely lucky on that fateful day, they would have still ended up with the first overall pick in our envisioned scenario. In case any of you guys forgot, the No. 1 overall pick of the 2012 NBA Draft was a phenom named Anthony Davis.
We understand that this scenario has more than a few holes, and it relies completely on some broad assumptions, but it's not crazy to think that this could have actually happened.
Just imagine a trio of Curry, Thompson, and Davis. If the Warriors won three titles in five years, then would it be safe to assume (again) that this New Orleans trio would have had more? We'd say that's certainly plausible.
Clippers
Finally, there would have been no Lob City era in Los Angeles, assuming CP3 didn't make his way to the Clippers down the road. We never would have witnessed the electrifying force that was Paul, Blake Griffin, and DeAndre Jordan wowing the basketball world on a nightly basis with their insane aerial antics. It was Paul who lobbed that memorable alley-oop pass to Jordan back in 2013, and if Paul went to Oakland, we wouldn't have been treated to what many consider to be the greatest dunk ever.
The Clippers won 32 games the season prior to Paul's arrival, and they missed the playoffs. However, they managed to make a postseason run in all six years with Paul at the helm. Without Paul, the Griffin-led Clippers would have, at best, probably been battling for the eighth spot in the West during the 2010s.
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