2012-2013 NBA Season

[thrill]

Dwight Howard to the Lakers, Andre Iguodala to the Nuggets, Andrew Bynum to Philly, Jason Richardson to Philly & the Magic will receive hot garbage & draft picks.

Crazy trade. LA is a contender again.

[cardsfansince82]

Howard forces his way to the Lakers after all. The notion of competitive balance is completely gone in the NBA. For a league with a salary cap that's pretty sad.

[slide_into_first]

Howard can leave after one year.

[Socnorb11]

How do the Lakers pull this off without giving up Gasol? Unreal.

Oh well, I guess the bright side is that this should prevent Lebron from winning another championship next year.


I like the deal from the Nuggets perspective. Glad to get rid of Harrington's contract, and replacing Affalo with Iggy makes them much better on both ends of the court (especially the defensive end). But it's not going to make enough difference.

[thrill]

There's a lot of confusing aspects of this deal, but how Orlando agreed to hot garbage and protected picks is beyond me.

[The Third Man]

There's a lot of confusing aspects of this deal, but how Orlando agreed to hot garbage and protected picks is beyond me.

Any time you can make a four-team trade where you give up the best asset and receive the worst ones, you have to take it. The NBA: Where Amazing Happens!

This post brought to you by Bill Simmons.

[MrSaigon]

Orlando doesn't get an impact player or even really the hope for one here, unless they win the lotto themselves

Hell they don't even do that well cap wise. Wtf? Maybe there's more to it.

[MrSaigon]

There were certainly better deals to be had before and there certainly would have been at the deadline.

[stlouie_lipp]

[cardsfansince82]

You have to build a stacked team to win the championship. The way I see it, only 8-10 teams really have that extra appeal to free agents and will be fighting over those top guys for the near future. Howard can leave LA if he wants, but he's guaranteed to end up on one of those 8-10 teams. The rest of the league is going to be stuck overpaying the guys that don't really deserve it and hope to grow their own talent. The only way for any of them to have a chance is to hit multiple home runs on lottery picks and save room for one max guy after the rest of the core is in place.

It seems awfully fishy that Orlando only seriously tried to trade him to LA and Brooklyn. Why do they give a [expletive] if he's happy with his new team? He couldn't veto a trade and there were other teams willing to trade for him knowing he's probably gone after one season. The Magic traded him to the Lakers for the worst package they were offered. The only thing I can figure is this is the earliest a team has ever tried to tank a season. In every trade scenario all of the other teams involved would be getting better, devaluing any potential draft picks received from them. So I think the Magic wanted to be so bad that their own picks are high in the lottery rather than take some decent pieces in return. They didn't want to get caught in an endless cycle of mediocrity like a lot of other teams where they aren't good enough to win and not bad enough to get elite talent in the draft. It makes some sense, unless you're a Magic season ticket holder or give a [expletive] about parity. Somewhere, a Magic fan is photoshopping an Orlando jersey on Nerlens Noel.