We've already posted some of the reactions to the Dwight Howard trade from earlier today as well as last night once deal looked like it was official. The overwhelming consensus is that the trade is a coup for the Lakers, very helpful to the Nuggets and 76ers, and an absolute disaster for the Magic. So far, it looks like our readers agree, as only a small percentage of you think that the Magic got the best end of the deal.
Orlando general manager Rob Hennigan, presumably under fire from all angles today, spoke with the press today and offered his defense of the move, as told by Tim Bontemps of the New York Post. Hennigan worked with two very successful organizations in the Spurs and Thunder, which was part of the reason he was brought in to run the show in Orlando. Most of the quotes are expected, but here are some interesting tidbits:
"Our goals remained consistent throughout. We wanted to put ourselves in a position to create some long-term sustainability over time, and doing that with a mixture of young players, young veterans, draft players and some other assets to use to build going forward."
To the second-guessers and the laundry lists of rumored offers that seem like better packages for Howard than the one the Magic came away with, Hennigan said:
"At the end of the day you look at what's available in theory and what's available in reality. Sometimes those two things aren't always the same. We felt with all of the options we did explore, this was the best one for us."
One of those packages was the one offereed by the Rockets, in which Houston was rumored to be willing to deal draft picks and/or young players as well as eat some of Orlando's bad contracts. According to John Denton of OrlandoMagic.com (via Twitter), Hennigan essentially admitted that the offer sheets to Jeremy Lin and Omer Asik "limited some of the avenues" to a completed deal that would have sent Howard to Houston.
Again from Denton, Hennigan offered a rather ominous quote when asked why the Magic weren't angling to receive Andrew Bynum in the deal:
"One thing we always do is our research. We're very comfortable with the research we've done."
Hennigan is flat out lying when he says the Houston offer sheets limited the deal. The Magic barely cleared any cap room in the trade they went with, due to Afflalo’s terrible contract–the Rockets, even with the offer sheets, could have given them twice as much cap relief without breaking a sweat.
Apparently they where only offering one or the other (the Rockets) so it wasn’t as good a deal as people are trying to make it seem (the Rockets deal). The Magic are still gonna have well over $35 million in cap space for the next 2 years so they did get in getting cap space. Assets wise yea they probably could of done better but atleast they got pieces that can help for the next few years and not a guy like Brook Lopez who isn’t worth a max deal period.
The Magic had little choice. When Shaq left, they got nothing. Here, they get a few players and pkicks. It is something for someone who did not want to play for them.