Anyone got Hollinger's breakdown of the trade for the magic?

clos4life · Aug 10, 2012

I'm just curious what he had to say about how poorly Magic did on the trade and I don't have insider. Thanks for any quotes on it.

J.R. · Aug 10, 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 whenDevin 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.
Click to expand...

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/stor...eason-dwight-howard-deal-head-scratcher-magic

Trackball · Aug 10, 2012

clos4life · Aug 10, 2012

J.R. said: ↑

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/stor...eason-dwight-howard-deal-head-scratcher-magic

Click to expand...

Thanks for the post. I'm astounded the Magic got bent over like this when they controlled the main piece of the trade. They got to give Rob Henningan the name "Robbed" Hennigan from now on lol.

conquistador#11 · Aug 10, 2012

what I find funny, in a dark way, is that all these media chumps were wanting Bizarro to go to L.A or Brooklyn. Now that he is finally there, they take shots at Orlando and how stupid their front office is.

SamFisher · Aug 10, 2012

conquistador#11 said: ↑

what I find funny, in a dark way, is that all these media chumps were wanting Bizarro to go to L.A or Brooklyn. Now that he is finally there, they take shots at Orlando and how stupid their front office is.
Click to expand...

I don't think you can accuse Hollinger of that at all.

That Boi Oz · Aug 10, 2012

So Orlando doesn't want to dance with us? Screw em they got what they deserve!!! Our rookies are way better than the players they got in this deal. Not only that but we could have offered 3 better future picks.

On top of that, we were in a position to take on more of their crappy contracts.

Mang you can't tell me this is on Morey. I'm sure the Rockets and Nets offers would have been 100 times better than what the Magic got in this trade. This is ALL on Orlando and them being stupid. They got totally reamed.

So pissed!

Juxtaposed Jolt · Aug 10, 2012

clos4life said: ↑

Thanks for the post. I'm astounded the Magic got bent over like this when they controlled the main piece of the trade. They got to give Rob Henningan the name "Robbed" Hennigan from now on lol.
Click to expand...

This.

Even letting Howard go at the end of the season would have been better than this deal, imo.

Raven · Aug 10, 2012

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 whenDevin 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.
Click to expand...

Bingo!

ashishduh · Aug 10, 2012

Would not the Toronto pick alone have been better than this deal for Orlando? Much less the salary we could eat and give them back expiring Martin. Wow.

jsuspect · Aug 10, 2012

Was that really a Hollinger article? I would've expected to see multiple references to PER in determining the overused "winners and losers" aspect of this trade.

J.R. said: ↑

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/stor...eason-dwight-howard-deal-head-scratcher-magic

Click to expand...

Jimes · Aug 10, 2012

jsuspect said: ↑

Was that really a Hollinger article? I would've expected to see multiple references to PER in determining the overused "winners and losers" aspect of this trade.
Click to expand...

He didn't even need to turn to quantitative evidence in this case.

thaidizzle · Aug 10, 2012

So Lakers got HOWARD for Bynum and a 1st round draft pick? WTF?

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Anyone got Hollinger's breakdown of the trade for the magic?

clos4life Member

J.R. Member

Trackball Member

clos4life Member

conquistador#11 Member

SamFisher Contributing Member

That Boi Oz Member

Juxtaposed Jolt Member

Raven Member

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