The NBA unexpectedly issued a memorandum to its teams to remind them about the league’s tampering regulations and specifically to warn them against illegal contact with Chris Paul, ESPN.com has learned.

The memo, circulated Tuesday by the league office, states that “no team should be having communications with Chris Paul or his agent or representative about a potential trade for Paul that have not been authorized in advance by the New Orleans Hornets.”

The memo, sources said, also threatens to punish any such communications with penalties that range from “suspension of the offending person, prohibition of the offending team from hiring the person being tampered with, forfeiture of draft picks and individual and/or team fines of up to $5 million.”

The NBA took the uncommon measure of actually naming a specific player in a tampering memo in the wake of various media reports in recent days that Paul’s new agent Leon Rose — who also represents Paul’s close friend LeBron James — has been urging a handful of teams to pursue trades for his client.

ESPN.com reported Monday that the Hornets have continued in recent days to reject all trade interest in Paul, greeting a flurry of calls from other teams prompted by increasing media speculation that Paul wants to be dealt with the same resistance they have maintained for months.

“They say they aren’t moving him,” one rival team executive said Monday of the Hornets.