http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...h-analysis-on-where-the-star-center-will-land No news or inside info, but interesting nonetheless. My starting offer to Orlando would be: http://games.espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=3qcll53 Without Howard, the Magic need to dump salary, get younger, and rebuild. We give three young, talented players in return for Reddick's bad contract and a guy they're going to lose anyway. From the article, the only offers that are clearly better would be Utah and Indiana, and I don't really see Howard going to either one. LA's offer, centered around Bynum, is attractive, as is the idea of playing in Los Angeles, but I honestly think our offer is better, and Kobe, Odom, Artest, and Gasol are all expensive and declining. I don't think we'll see them contend again without a full rebuild. Could we have a chance?
Our chances kind of hinge on a cpl things. Probably most importantly is how much their owner hates the idea of having "the best center of the next decade" go to the Lakers again, I'd bet a lot and if he didn't, a Roman Senate lynching may be the order of the day from those fans (Replace their owner with Les and replace Shaq with Hakeem, put yourself in that situation, how's that gonna go down?). Teams like Portland and Indiana are kinda laughable, they're tiny markets (let me define how tragic Portland is....Their franchise's best player ever considers himself a Rocket) Another factor is does Dwight consider following in Hakeem's footsteps a good or bad thing? Sure he respects the guy a helluvalot, but does the idea of having his statue alongside Hakeem's appeal to him (Hakeem would drop whatever he was doing to be at Dwight's first game as a rocket) One thing's for sure though, we certainly have the roster and contract flexibility to go for max FA #2 and put good roleplayers around him.
I would do that trade then maybe go after Cp3 but I think im dreaming and no one knows what the new CBA is going to be
Where does Nelson get offloaded to? Who else joins the Rox? What does the new CBA say about any of this? And most important, what happens to Thabeet? :grin:
No team will trade for Howard unless they know he's going to re-up, and most of those trade scenarios are with teams that I highly doubt Dwight would want any part of. Orlando is screwed no matter what happens.
What? Just like what the Jazz did with D-Will? I highly doubt Williams wanted a trade to NJ. Morey has made it known he can and will trade for a star even as a "rental".
Lowry we'd be almost guaranteed to lose (he's basically one tier below all star on a 5-6m 2.5yr contract), Scola too i'd guess, Martin they wouldn't want (1.5 yrs on 12m, what is the point of that?), Morris they may and the NY draft pick. Is it better than any magic team? probably about on par, but it has one major difference, the two best pgs in the nba are going free agent, want to win titles and he's going to have room under basically any conceivable cba for them.
Assuming a probale Lowry+Morris+pick(s)+hill/thabeet trade: Dragic/Flynn Lee/Williams Martin/Budinger hayes/Patterson Howard/Hill That team would Dominate the NBA. Every position outside of SF/PG is occupied by a lockdown defender (and Dragic is no slouch either) and the Martin/Howard combination would be lethal. The bench has a some serious potential as well.
The big difference between Houston and Orlando is that the Magic have peaked, and they're capped out. Their payroll is packed with big, underperforming contracts, they have no desirable assets, they're far over the lux tax, and have no hope of getting better without blowing the team up. We aren't in that situation. Our team is not maxed out, and via trade, free agency, and a proven track record in the draft, we have the potential to get better even after we add Howard. Or at least that's how I hope he sees it :grin:
That's weak at SF (Martin is no SF), that team wouldn't dominate, it doesn't really have a go to guy, but it's a lot of talent to basically have with 20-30m to spare, I'd be looking for Patterson to start (he suits Dwight much better than Hayes would), I'm not sure what the new contracts will look like, but their current contracts outside of Martin and Howard obviously isn't a guy over 3m.
