NBA Offseason 2012 - Page 66

On August 10 2012 15:36 RowdierBob wrote:


Haha, yeah. Philly, Denver and LA are actually all better from this trade, but Orlando is getting so monumentally shit on it beggars belief as to why they'd okay it...

Maybe they'll "miraculously" win the lotto in a couple of year ala the Hornets or Chicago.

ESPN.com | August 9, 2012
That's it?

Wait, let me rephrase that.

THAT'S IT????!?!?!?!?!?!?

John McEnroe-like wonder fills me at the reported Dwight Howard trade to the Lakers. You cannot be serious! I keep hoping in vain for David Stern to intervene and void the trade for basketball reasons. Or any other reason.

This deal makes a mockery of the new collective bargaining agreement's alleged fairness to small markets; Orlando is selling one of the best players in the NBA for pennies on the dollar, while the rich only get richer. (But the tax-paying Lakers can't sign-and-trade Matt Barnes -- that'll show 'em!)

Mark my words: When we have our next lockout in 2016, this trade will be one of the flash points. The Lakers have a $99 million payroll, and will go over the century mark if and when Devin Ebanks and Barnes re-sign. For the small-market owners, all they can do is count the luxury tax dollars from L.A. and golf clap over their 53-win glass ceiling. That's better than losing money, but they're still hermetically sealed off from a taste of the championship unless they're either incredibly lucky or incredibly brilliant. (Schedule alert: The Lakers don't visit the House That Dwight Built And Promptly Vacated until March 12.)

To review the known details for each team in this complex deal, which is pending a Friday morning trade call:

- The Lakers give up Andrew Bynum, Christian Eyenga and a protected 2017 first-round pick, and receive Howard, Chris Duhon and Earl Clark.

- The Nuggets give up Arron Afflalo, Al Harrington and a protected first-round pick, and receive Andre Iguodala.

- The Sixers give up Iguodala, Nikola Vucevic, Moe Harkless and a protected first-round pick that can be no earlier than 2015, and receive Bynum and Jason Richardson.

- The Magic give up Howard, Richardson, Duhon and Clark, and receive Afflalo, Harrington, Vucevic, Harkless, Eyenga and the three protected first-round picks mentioned above.

Basically, I like this deal for the other three teams ... and hate it for Orlando. Let's break it down for each one:

Orlando Magic

I don't feel totally comfortable ripping them because I don't know what competing offers they had, but I have a hard time believing they couldn't do better than this. Suddenly, overpaying Brook Lopez doesn't sound so bad.

The Magic didn't generate that much salary-cap savings, but they don't really need to. They'll have max cap room heading into the 2013 offseason, and they'll be even further under cap if they cut partially guaranteed deals belonging to Harrington and Hedo Turkoglu.

But let's put it this way: The two players they received as salary ballast wouldn't have been my first two choices from the three other rosters in this deal.

Afflalo is a halfway decent scorer who decided he was The Man last season and stopped played defense. He's a hard-working, quality player, but he's also owed $31 million over the next four years and he'll be 27 years old by the start of this coming season.

Harrington had a nice 2011-12 too, but Denver was wise to sell high. He's also a Fluke Rule player (i.e., his stats can be expected to regress sharply next season), has a bad knee and is 32 years old. Just what you need to rebuild.

Together, the Afflalo and Harrington make nearly as much as Howard, and I'd argue that their two contracts have negative value going forward (although the Magic could still cut Harrington after the season and save half the money since his deal is only 50 percent guaranteed).

Oh, the Magic got some other things out of it, but it's all flotsam. They received three first-round picks, but they won't get much immediate help from those -- Philly's pick won't arrive until 2015 at the earliest, and the pick from the Lakers won't be available until 2017.

The Magic also get two recent draft picks in the deal, Harkless and Vucevic, so they'll argue that they got five first-round picks for Howard. But they'll likely end up being five low-value firsts at the back end of the draft. In fact, they're guaranteed to be bad, since our Marc Stein reports that all three future ones are lottery protected. Of the other two, Vucevic is a solid backup center but nothing special, and I thought Harkless was a reach as a first-rounder.

Instead, the only lottery pick Orlando gets out of this is its own, after what figures to be a 19-win season in 2012-13 leaves the Magic with a top-five pick.

The amazing part, however, is what Orlando didn't get out of this: No Bynum. No Pau Gasol. Not even an Iguodala. I have a hard time believing they couldn't stick the Lakers with Harrington and Magic forward Glen Davis in return for Gasol, given that the Lakers had no other realistic means of acquiring Howard.

It appears Orlando wants to rip its roster down to the studs and emulate the Oklahoma City model -- after all, new general manager Rob Hennigan came from the Thunder -- and perhaps they can pull it off. Now all they have to do is select an all-time great and two other All-Stars in the next three drafts, and they'll be all set to emulate the Thunder.

Los Angeles Lakers

This is going to be so funny next summer when Howard spurns the Lakers to sign with the Hawks.

(Wakes up.)

Holy hell, it's good to be the Lakers. After somehow parlaying a pile of backyard trash into Steve Nash, they now have converted the very good Andrew Bynum into the absolutely dominant Dwight Howard. As reported, they somehow didn't have to give up Gasol, or even take back any bad contracts. But I'm sure they're crying a river over the 2017 first-round pick they had to give up. You'll excuse the Spurs and Thunder for feeling like they're playing a game that's rigged against them.

It leaves the Lakers with a bit of a Miami in 2010-11 scenario, where the pieces don't quite fit and they have to figure out how to make them mesh. As it was with Miami, having pieces like these means it probably doesn't matter.

Process this: Pau Gasol is the fourth option. The Lakers are running the pick-and-roll with Nash and Howard, Gasol lifting for the mid-range J and Kobe lurking on the weak side? Good luck defending that.

There is some risk that Howard will leave after the season, but it was equally present with Bynum. The new CBA incentivizes players to test free agency, so flight risk is part of the equation going forward. But again, when you're the Lakers, flight risk is much less of a problem than it is for, oh, say, Orlando.

Philadelphia 76ers

I've been harsh on Philly's front office, but this is a heck of a deal for them. Players like Bynum weren't going to just show up in Philadelphia, but between having his Bird Rights and his growing up in nearby central Jersey, he's about as minimal a flight risk as they could hope to get.

Suddenly, the Sixers have a building block in the middle, and it didn't even cost them that much. Iguodala is a heck of a player and will be missed, but the other assets they relinquished were fungible. And even though Richardson is on a bad contract, he isn't exactly dead weight -- especially with a big man to draw double-teams.

Of course, this makes the preceding events of the summer only look more foolish. Elton Brand would have been great next to Bynum, there's no need for Kwame Brown to play a minute on this roster (not that there was before) and Nick Young and Dorell Wright are redundant next to Richardson. Philly still has some work to do to get its roster shipshape for opening day. (Also, Philly: Any time you want to sign a backup point guard, go right ahead. Really.)

But as for this trade? There's no way Philly couldn't do this deal. When you're one of the Other 25 in the league, you have to take chances on elite players when they come. The Sixers are taking a calculated gamble, and it should pay off. Their worst-case scenario is they get one year of Bynum and drop Iguodala's contract, which isn't necessarily a bad thing on its own.

Denver Nuggets

I love this deal for the Nuggets. Loveitloveitloveit. Iguodala is a hellacious wing stopper, the perfect compliment for Danilo Gallinari, and his transition play will only be more terrifying surrounded by all of that speed in Denver. The Nuggets are selling high on two players (Afflalo and Harrington) who may have peaked last season (especially Harrington), and move themselves a bit closer to making their no-stars model a viable one for getting beyond the first round of the playoffs.

The only little fly in the ointment is that they helped the Lakers get Howard. Um, that's gonna be a problem. But Denver got better too, and did so while actually improving its cap position, since Iguodala only has two years left on his deal. The Nuggets wriggle out of about $23 million in future money, or $16 million if you subtract the non-guaranteed part of Harrington's deal, and put themselves in position to be a cap team in 2014 if this doesn't work.

As an aside, it also appears that the Nuggets have become masters of what we'll call the "delayed sign-and-trade." After mild overpays of both Nene and Afflalo last summer, done to keep each from departing without compensation, Denver quickly moved them along before the deals came back to bite them. The race between Wilson Chandler and JaVale McGee to be the next one should be entertaining.

On August 10 2012 15:27 Ace wrote:
I love how the Lakers keep the rape train going. Orlando is as usual, stupid.

On August 10 2012 17:59 slyboogie wrote:


Denver was involved. Too soon.

On August 10 2012 18:45 TwoToneTerran wrote:


What? Rape has nothing to do with mass shootings, regardless of the poor taste in analogy.

On August 10 2012 15:10 XaI)CyRiC wrote:
As a Lakers fan, all I can do is smile

On August 11 2012 00:16 MassHysteria wrote:
Lakers get Duhon as well? Oh hells yes.!! It wouldn't surprise me if Blake gets amnestied now, although I can also see why they wouldn't want to do that either (depth). They would definitely amnesty MWP if they had someone else decent at SF..

And too soon to be talking about lockouts already lol. We haven't even seen the effects of this last season's lockout yet and people are wanting another one? Wait until teams have to pay the multiple-year luxury tax in a few years to say anything, or even just wait until next season when a lot of the new provisions for FA kicks in. Only until teams actually have to sign the big checks for the league will we then know if this CBA changed anything at all, or how little/big changes it did produce. One trade doesn't mean that much for the effects of the CBA.

On August 11 2012 00:27 rei wrote:
It's ganna be interesting to see how well Kobe does without dominating the ball. He won't be getting 20shots a game every night for sure. and Howard is ganna get all kind of loops, all he had to do is run toward the basket without the ball. And then finally This LA defense is upgraded big time, and look out for 50point blow outs when they stomp through weak teams and make nba competition looks like a joke.

"Well, it looks like Superman has found a home. I wish nothing but the best for Big Bynum. I hope he follows what was a great season last year with an even better one next year. I know LA is excited about the deal and rightfully so. The Lakers landed a piece that will hopefully carry the franchise long after I'm gone. I have spoken to Dwight Howard already and we are locked and loaded to bring back the title. Wow, what a summer Jimmy and Mitch have had so far. Unreal! I'm focused on our semifinal game vs Argentina but I had to pause for a few to send you my thoughts, in case you were curious.."