Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports reports that the New Orleans Hornets are closing in on a deal to send All-Star point guard Chris Paul to the Los Angeles Lakers in exchange for Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom. The Houston Rockets would be involved as facilitators. ---------------------------- Hornets working to finalize details on 3-team deal to send Chris Paul to Lakers, Pau Gasol to Rockets and Lamar Odom, Kevin Martin, Luis Scola to New Orleans, sources say. It is likely that the Hornets will receive draft picks as part of a package for Paul, but source says: "Those are still being determined." Update: A deal has been reached in principle to send Chris Paul to the Los Angeles Lakers, an executive in the three-team talks tells Yahoo! Sports. ---------------------------- Update (6:06 PM): Marc Stein of ESPN.com reports that the deal is "off." ---------------------------- Trade with Lakers will NOT go through Friday and Chris Paul is expected in Hornets camp, according to sources. It was not immediately clear, sources said, if three-way trade involving Hornets, Lakers and Rockets is merely snagged or in jeopardy. One source close to the three-team Chris Paul trade talks just told ESPN.com: "The deal is off." ---------------------------- Wojnarowski now writes... ---------------------------- NBA commissioner David Stern has killed the New Orleans Hornets’ trade of Chris Paul after several owners complained about the league-owned team dealing the All-Star point guard to the Los Angeles Lakers, league sources told Yahoo! Sports. Some owners pushed Stern to demand the trade be nullified, and the Hornets be made to keep Paul on the roster for the foreseeable future, sources said. A chorus of owners were irate with the belief that the five-month lockout had happened largely to stop big-market teams from leveraging small-market teams for star players pending free agency. "The deal is off," a source involved in the talks told Y! Sports. "It’s dead." ---------------------------- Sam Amick of SI.com obtained this statement from NBA spokesman Tim Frank: "Not true that owners killed the (3-team) deal. It wasn't even discussed at the Board meeting. League office declined to make the trade for basketball reasons." The NBA bought back ownership control of the Hornets and has veto power over all personnel moves, although it had not exercised that power until Thursday. Vote on the NBA's decision to kill the deal here. ed: text updated, bumped to front page