Dwightmare Over: Howard Headed To Lakers

Lakers president Mitch Kupchak, described the process of figuring out what the right deal would be for the trade as ‘frustrating’. Magic general manager Rob Hennigan had been trying to figure out any way to get Howard traded. After a lot of missteps and failed deals, Kupchak said it had died for a bit, according to an article by the OC Register.

Because of that interest, Howard’s No. 12 jersey features Laker gold and purple, and fans once again are hoping that a championship is in their near future.

For more on the Rockets, head over to The Dream Shake.

From the Salt Lake City Tribune:

The rest of that article is pretty much what you’d expect, but his point up there is important because it’s probably going to be echoed a lot in the coming months.

With a single season remaining on his deal before becoming an Unrestriced Free Agent, Bynum has the option of playing out the year in Philadelphia only to act like Howard and refuse to re-sign with the Sixers, which is becoming a concern around the NBA as of late.

However, according to a report by HoopsWorld.com, Bynum is “beyond thrilled” in his new city.

With the end of the Dwight Howard saga, we now turn our attention back to basketb-- yeah right. We still have two and a half months before basketball that counts. We’re not paying attention to basketball yet. With the end of the Dwight Howard saga, we now turn our attention (and anxiety) toward figuring out who might offer our next great off-court saga. It’s time to suss out who will be the next Dwight Howard.

There are specific ingredients needed to create a Dwight Howard. The player must be really, really good. If it’s a boring player, then it just turns into Mickael Pietrus complaining to the equipment manager, and that’s just sad. The team must also not be particularly glamorous, so the Lakers, Knicks, Nets, Heat and Bulls are out. (The Bulls aren’t exactly glamorous, but they get the job done.) And finally, the player needs to be approaching unrestricted free agency on some reasonable timeframe. The typical lead time on one of these sagas is one year, based on the Carmelo Anthony (aka Melodrama), Chris Paul, Deron Williams and Dwight Howard scenarios. (When I say Deron Williams, I mean the Nets version.) Players currently on their rookie deals -- Brandon Jennings, DeMarcus Cousins, John Wall -- are ineligible because unrestricted free agency is a long ways away.

Hunt stated that Howard will be able to resume training and “basketball activity” in just a few weeks and that after a few months of recovery he should be ready to resume playing in games. The reason for optimism is that Howard suffered from an acute injury rather than a chronic one, which is what is plaguing Bynum’s knees.

You can listen to the full interview here.

For more on the teams involved with the Howard deal, visit Magic blog Orlando Pinstriped Post, Lakers blog Silver Screen and Roll, Nuggets blog Denver Stiffs and Sixers blog Liberty Ballers.

That Nets deal looks a little better than the one the Magic accepted, and the ways in which this one pans out better are a.) the Harkless and Vucevic dice rolls both paying off or b.) the Magic hitting gold on one of those draft picks or c.) both. There’s no obvious and compelling reason to have made this trade instead of that Nets one.

Martin vs. Afflalo is probably a wash -- Martin’s the more logical primary scorer, Afflalo the more well-rounded player, and neither is really an exciting return as the best player coming back for Dwight Howard. But shedding Turkoglu and/or Davis, not taking on Harrington’s contract, and getting some subset of six players currently under the age of 24 (a few of whom could be very good) is substantially better for the 2012-13 Magic than Vucevic and Harkless, and probably better in the long run than the plate of offal that is the three draft picks the Magic did get.

Sacramento Kings center DeMarcus Cousins learned about the Dwight Howard to the Lakers trade on Thursday night, he processed it, and he responded the only way he knows how: by trolling hard.

Check out what Boogie posted on Instagram as the news of the trade leaked out, via Greg Wissinger:

Dwight Howard told the media on Friday night that he may not be ready for the L.A. Lakers’ opening night due to continued recovery from back surgery. He said that there’s no timetable to get back into action, but that he hasn’t lost any weight due to inactivity and hopes to be back in time to start the season with his new club.

Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak also said the team consulted with Howard’s back surgeon, who said that once Howard is back in action, he should be as healthy as he’d been before the back surgery. Howard’s new teammate Steve Nash has also dealt with back issues throughout his career. Kobe Bryant’s ailments are typically associated with the knee.

This is short and sweet, but you knew Craig Sager was going to ask Kobe Bryant about his new teammate, Dwight Howard. Late Thursday night, reports emerged indicating Howard was heading to the Lakers in a huge four-team trade. And as quickly as the rumors popped up, the trade was finalized with the league office.

So naturally, the attention turned to Kobe. And he handled things politically after Team USA beat Argentina to advance to the gold medal game.

Some additional quotes, from CBS Sports’ Matt Moore:

For more on the Magic, be sure to check out Orlando Pinstriped Post and SB Nation Tampa Bay.

Judging from these tweets, though, maybe Shaq still has that itch that he needs to scratch.

I’m guessing Rob Hennigan won’t have the opportunity to answa dat question.

From the Magic’s release:

For more on the teams involved with the Howard deal, visit Magic blog Orlando Pinstriped Post, Lakers blog Silver Screen and Roll, Nuggets blog Denver Stiffs and Sixers blog Liberty Ballers.

The final pieces of the deal were being discussed on Friday, but the trade itself was never in doubt. Now, it only looks like a matter of time before all the loose ends are tied.

For more on these teams, visit SB Nation blogs Orlando Pinstriped Post, Silver Screen and Roll, Denver Stiffs and Liberty Ballers. And for more analysis of the trade, check out this video.

The Dwight Howard trade hasn’t even been made official yet, but it’s already shaken up the NBA landscape, and Friday the Vegas oddsmakers took notice. The Lakers had been listed at 10/1 odds to win the NBA Championship in 2013, but after Thursday those odds dropped to 3/1.

The Heat are still the favorites at 5/2, of course, but it’s closer than ever. Meanwhile, the Thunder are looming at 11/2 as a pretty decent bet. The full odds, courtesy of Bovada.Lv, are listed below:

We talked to Nate Timmons of SB Nation’s Nuggets blog Denver Stiffs about the trade.

The Nuggets have now traded Nene and Arron Afflalo, the two 2011 free agents that seemed most important to keep. Do you see it as an admission they overpaid or as a set of trades that upgraded the roster?

Dwight Howard is reportedly headed to the Lakers -- for real this time -- and it’s the end of a journey that’s been pretty miserable for everyone involved. It’s been almost a year-and-a-half now, and since all this first got started there we’ve been able to enjoy...

Just... So many memories! And of course, we’ve also been waterboarded with daily rumors for the past nine months or so, just in case anyone was threatening to stay sane through all this.

It remains to be seen what other minor pieces are involved in this trade, but given that a trade call with the league has already been scheduled, it doesn’t look like this complication will hold up much.

For more on these teams, visit SB Nation blogs Orlando Pinstriped Post, Silver Screen and Roll, Denver Stiffs and Liberty Ballers.

We talked to Michael Levin of SB Nation’s Sixers blog Liberty Ballers about the moves.

Andre Iguodala is finally gone. Is it bittersweet, or do you feel as if you can finally move on with this team?

We asked Evan Dunlap, the ace editor of Orlando Pinstriped Post, a few questions about the deal.

But the Magic’s goal is to be absolutely dreadful for the foreseeable future so that their own picks are valuable, enabling them to rebuild quickly. In that regard, this deal is a success. Without knowing exactly what Houston was offering, it’s tough to say if this four-teamer tops it. Having said that, I can’t imagine Houston’s offer being any worse for Orlando’s purposes.

UGH.

The Magic took the extraordinary step of lighting it all on fire to become really bad -- a time-honored NBA tradition -- so that they can again become really good. The only problem is this: the teams that usually try to get really bad in order to get really good pick up some real young assets to help out on the upswing. Harkless was the No. 15 pick in June’s draft. Vucevic went No. 16 in the awful 2011 draft. None of the picks the Magic receive will be worth a whole lot unless GM Rob Hennigan hits home runs. Afflalo is a nice player who is nothing close to a star, and is paid pretty well. (He’s due about $30 million over the next four years.) Harrington is a player who’d be just fine on a contending team that needs a stretch four in spot minutes.

The Lakers basically traded Andrew Bynum for Dwight Howard on Thursday. The Los Angeles Times picked a headline-photo combination that, perhaps unintentionally, echoed the sentiments of most Lakers fans you’ll run into over the next three months. Check out below the jump.

From Mario Aguirre via Metal Katz.

Is that a massive ding on Hennigan’s reputation? Perhaps it shouldn’t be, as ESPN’s John Hollinger reports that the new GM wasn’t in the driver’s seat on such a massive decision.

The non-basketball executives tend to get involved in the huge, impactful deals -- and not the smaller coin-flip risk-reward deals. Of course, in a perfect world, it’d be the opposite: you’d have the people paid to study basketball performance making the huge decisions because, you know, it’s what you hired them to do.

The Lakers will be the fourth team of Duhon’s career. He played in 63 games for Orlando last season, averaging 3.8 points and 2.4 assists per game. Clark, who was the No. 14 pick in the 2009 NBA Draft, played in 45 games for the Magic last season. He has career averages of 3.1 points and 2.1 rebounds per game.

It’s unknown if both players will stick with the Lakers or if Los Angeles will pursue buyouts to clear roster space.