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.”

Hornets general manager Dell Demps is “disconsolate” over this stunning, heavy-handed move from the commissioner’s office, a source told Y! Sports.

All the players involved in the trade have been told to report to their teams for the start of training camp on Friday.

Before Stern intervened, the Lakers had reached an agreement to acquire Paul in a three-team trade that would have cost them Pau Gasol andLamar Odom, league sources told Yahoo! Sports.

Under terms of the deal, the Lakers would have sent Gasol to the Rockets. The Hornets would have received Odom, Rockets guards Kevin Martinand Goran Dragic and forward Luis Scola, league sources said.

Houston had also agreed to send a 2012 first-round pick – previously obtained from the Knicks – to New Orleans as part of the package, a source said.

Hornets general manager Dell Demps had informed two of the other finalists for Paul on Thursday evening that he had a deal in place for Paul to go the Lakers, front-office sources said.

Paul had listed the Lakers as one of his preferred destinations, and it became a more clear choice for him on Thursday after the New York Knicks moved to the brink of completing a four-year, $58 million contract for free-agent center Tyson Chandler. The Knicks lost the salary-cap space they would’ve needed to sign Paul this summer, and the Lakers had been pushing hard to close a deal for Paul with Houston and New Orleans.

The Lakers could turn their attention toward using center Andrew Bynum as a trading chip to make a play for Orlando Magic center Dwight Howard.

Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert called the New Orleans Hornets’ proposed trade of Chris Paul to theLos Angeles Lakers a “travesty,” and urged NBA commissioner David Stern to put the deal to vote of the league’s 29 owners in an email obtained by Yahoo! Sports. Gilbert sent the email to Stern, deputy commissioner Adam Silver and a handful of Gilbert’s ownership peers on Thursday.

The following is the email in its entirety:

Commissioner,

Dan G.