As for Hood - it's been done before but if you look at the NBA cap situation this summer, it's extremely limited (only 10 teams have over 10 million in space) so that really limits his trade market...the other 20 teams will have to go into the penalty to sign him whereas the other 10 know they can potentially sign him to an offer sheet that wouldn't be worth going into the penalty for.

edit: Because that team's cost was being shared by all the NBA owners and Stern's primary job was to get the Hornets sold to a new owner. He knew that a non-leveraged (low salary) team with a high draft pick is far more attractive than a highly-leveraged (high salary) middling team.

Now if you want to talk about conspiracies - the Clippers (the only other suitors for CP3 at the time) coincidentally being the highest-bidder for Chauncey (after the Knicks used the amnesty on him) which gave them a replacement for Eric Gordon (over whom trade talks had previously broken down) resulting in that deal going through raises a few eyebrows.