Blog

I awoke this morning expecting not to check news from the basketball world. Life for us Celtics fans has been pretty quiet on that front for the past couple of weeks. Heck, the first thing I do when I get up is to check ESPN, RealGM and Inside Hoops for even the smallest piece of basketball news, but not this morning. I logged into Facebook for the first time in a week, and found a lot of complaining about the Lakers right away on my news feed. My first thoughts were doom and gloom. Upon checking out the story on Inside Hoops, I transitioned to anger. The Lakers appear to have stolen Dwight Howard from the Magic in a four team deal that makes every single team better, except for the incompetent Orlando Magic.

Here’s the general run down:

• The Lakers trade Andrew Bynum and a protected 2017 first-round pick, and receive Dwight Howard.

• The Nuggets trade Arron Afflalo, Al Harrington and a protected first-round pick, and receive Andre Iguodala.

• The Sixers trade Andre Iguodala, Nikola Vucevic, Moe Harkless and a protected first-round pick, and receive Andrew Bynum and Jason Richardson.

• The Magic trade Dwight Howard and Jason Richardson, and receive Arron Afflalo, Al Harrington, Nikola Vucevic, Moe Harkless and the three protected first-round picks (LAL, DEN & PHI)

The Magic were robbed. It will be interesting to see if David Stern blocks this deal for basketball reasons. I’m still fuming over this, it seems so easy for the Lakers to gather stars, compared to other teams. When we acquired Ray Allen, we had to give up promising guard Delonte West, and the 5th pick in the draft. We gave up a ransom to get Kevin Garnett. These deals worked for us, so I shouldn’t complain too much. The Lakers have managed to acquire Steve Nash for a smashed up bag of Cheetos, Dwight Howard for Andrew Bynum, and will probably still be able to re-sign Ebanks and Barnes should they want to.

One positive thing to come from this trade is that if we make the finals, we have all season long to plan and scheme on ways to beat the Lakers.