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Amick: Hornets G Eric Gordon Skeptical Of GMs After Neil Olshey Traded Him

Hornets guard Eric Gordon is still upset with Blazers GM Neil Olshey for the 2011 trade that sent him from Los Angeles to New Orleans.

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Steve Dykes-US PRESSWIRE

Sam Amick of USA Today Sports reports that New Orleans Hornets guard Eric Gordon feels some frustration over his relationships with GMs during his brief career. In particular, Gordon brought up the 2011 trade that sent him from the Los Angeles Clippers to the Hornets in a package for Chris Paul. Gordon found out about the trade while on a bus for a Clippers season-ticket holder event.

"You can say one thing and do another, but at the end of the day I don't get into it. With the things that I've been in with GMs, where I had one GM (former Clippers GM Neil Olshey, who now is in Portland) say that you'll never get traded and the next thing you know that ends up happening a few days later. And now you have another GM who says you're going to be here long term, so you would expect that to be the longest term that you can for being a part of this team (contractually). And I am here long term, but I could've had an opportunity to have five (years) instead of four."

Last year, Gordon told Marc Spears of Yahoo! Sports that Clippers management "completely lied" and was "unprofessional" during the trade process.

"All you do is take the man's word and take that he said that no one is going to go anywhere," Gordon told Yahoo! Sports. "... To completely lie like that is something unprofessional."

...

"I'm not deceptive enough to look players in the eye and tell them something that is not true," Olshey said. "And I can tell you from an ownership level, the president of our company, myself, we made a corporate decision Monday morning that when the deal didn't go through on Sunday night we would no longer pursue the trade. And that's when we notified our players, to get the elephant out of the room during our abbreviated training camp."

...

"I'm completely empathetic on how the guys found out. Had it not been a community-relations day and they wouldn't have been on the buses, they would have been at home and we would have been able to call all of them."

-- Ben Golliver | benjamin.golliver@gmail.com | Twitter