The Lakers

Finally get their man. Dwight Howard. The Lakers will receive Howard, the Denver Nuggets will acquire Andre Iguodala, the 76ers will receive Andrew Bynum and Jason Richardson, and the Magic will get Arron Afflalo, Al Harrington, Nikola Vucevic and one protected future first-round pick from each of the three teams.

Damn Orlando might as well have bent over a saw horse outside a gay night club at 02:00 with a sign taped to their backs saying "Get you some" The picks are protected meaning they won't be lottery picks (not like they normally are anyway being these teams are worth a shit) They could have had Bynum but instead get extra parts that you can't build around. Gasol didn't get moved as previously mentioned so Kobe is happy.

No way in hell Howard gets away from LA. He may not sign until next summer but I'd bet the farm he does not leave

 

The Lakers ought to be formidable now with Howard on board and keeping Gasol. Kobe must be thrilled.

Too bad the Bobcats could not get in on the trade and get some benefit.

 

From Insider: What it is for each team in trade

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 didn't really need to. They'll have max cap room heading into the 2013 offseason, and they'll be even further under the 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 playing 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 is 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, 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 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 Orlando 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 the Magic 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, in which the pieces don't quite fit and they have to figure out how to make them mesh. As it was with Miami, having pieces such as 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 midrange 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 gives players incentive 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 the 76ers. Players such as Bynum aren'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 complement for Danilo Gallinari, and his transition play will only be more terrifying surrounded by all that speed in Denver. The Nuggets are selling high on two players (Afflalo and Harrington) who might 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 has only two years left on his deal. The Nuggets wriggle out of about $23 million in future money, or $16 million if you subtract the nonguaranteed 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 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 it. The race between Wilson Chandler and JaVale McGee to be the next one should be entertaining.

In the meantime, a Denver club that was 19th in defensive efficiency likely will make a sharp jump with Iggy in tow. And as a side benefit, the Nuggets create some space on a roster that was getting dangerously overcrowded.

 

Orlando probably sucks for a while now. Maybe this helps the Bobcats, if they can get better there is one less good team to keep them out of the playoffs....

 

Supposedly the Magic didn't want Gasol. Fuck the Lakers, but especially fuck Hennigan who has put himself in the conversation for worst GM in the NBA. That's saying something, as the NBA has more unbelievably awful general managers than any other sport.

 

This is what is wrong with the NBA. I hate the NBA.