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Aug 11, 2012, 5:21 am
It is a great deal for the Lakers, Nuggets and Sixers as all three teams are instantly better and the Lakers are the new favorites. It is an appalling deal for the Magic.
I should start by saying that I honestly believe this deal is better for Orlando than what the Nets were offering. The Nets offer was disgusting and people are giving the Magic a bad wrap for walking away from a burning pile of dung because they don't understand the value of contractual flexibility under the salary cap: Lopez on a max contract, Humphries on a 2yr $24m contract are both franchise crippling deals despite the fact that they are both pretty good players. There is no way that those contracts would help the Magic and Brooks is a bit of a meh player. Add in several picks that are certain to be late first rounders and that is a significantly worse offer than benching Howard all season, losing a lot of games, getting your own high lottery pick and letting Dwight walk for nothing.
So is the package of Afflalo, Harkless, Vucevic plus three first round picks which will probably be late first rounders better than the "let Dwight walk" scenario that I just described? Probably. Was it worth pulling the trigger on? No way. The Magic got spooked and sold short. End of story. Worst case scenario they could have easily gotten at least this level of value at the trade deadline if nothing better came along.
The truly mind blowing thing is that the Rockets were offering the Magic what I believe would have been a reasonable deal and the Magic turned it down for this crap! Unreal. The Rockets books were open, the Magic could have had Kevin Martin (expiring contract that they could have flipped for an asset) plus their pick of the litter from the Rockets young draft picks: Patrick Patterson, Marcus Morris, Jeremy Lamb, Terence Jones and Royce White. They haven't confirmed what the Rockets offer was but rumors I saw a few weeks ago had any two of those youngsters going to the Magic plus multiple first round draft picks (which have a fair chance of being decent picks). The only catch in the Houston deal was that the Rockets wouldn't take on any bad contracts.
At the end of the day the Magic downgraded their return in order to get rid of Jason Richardson, Earl Clark and Chris Duhon which are all better than Al Harrington's contract that they took on (well Richardson is arguably a push) whilst they still have Turkoglu's dagger of a contract on the books. This team is now more of a disaster than when Dwight was being a prima donna over the past two seasons.
I should start by saying that I honestly believe this deal is better for Orlando than what the Nets were offering. The Nets offer was disgusting and people are giving the Magic a bad wrap for walking away from a burning pile of dung because they don't understand the value of contractual flexibility under the salary cap: Lopez on a max contract, Humphries on a 2yr $24m contract are both franchise crippling deals despite the fact that they are both pretty good players. There is no way that those contracts would help the Magic and Brooks is a bit of a meh player. Add in several picks that are certain to be late first rounders and that is a significantly worse offer than benching Howard all season, losing a lot of games, getting your own high lottery pick and letting Dwight walk for nothing.
So is the package of Afflalo, Harkless, Vucevic plus three first round picks which will probably be late first rounders better than the "let Dwight walk" scenario that I just described? Probably. Was it worth pulling the trigger on? No way. The Magic got spooked and sold short. End of story. Worst case scenario they could have easily gotten at least this level of value at the trade deadline if nothing better came along.
The truly mind blowing thing is that the Rockets were offering the Magic what I believe would have been a reasonable deal and the Magic turned it down for this crap! Unreal. The Rockets books were open, the Magic could have had Kevin Martin (expiring contract that they could have flipped for an asset) plus their pick of the litter from the Rockets young draft picks: Patrick Patterson, Marcus Morris, Jeremy Lamb, Terence Jones and Royce White. They haven't confirmed what the Rockets offer was but rumors I saw a few weeks ago had any two of those youngsters going to the Magic plus multiple first round draft picks (which have a fair chance of being decent picks). The only catch in the Houston deal was that the Rockets wouldn't take on any bad contracts.
At the end of the day the Magic downgraded their return in order to get rid of Jason Richardson, Earl Clark and Chris Duhon which are all better than Al Harrington's contract that they took on (well Richardson is arguably a push) whilst they still have Turkoglu's dagger of a contract on the books. This team is now more of a disaster than when Dwight was being a prima donna over the past two seasons.