>"you're small market and your team lacks a AAA superstar?
>well tank, ship out any good players you have to save coin
>till you catch your white whale, and enjoy watching the Lakers
>deep runs into the playoffs while you scour the news on
>nbadraft.net."

I can appreciate your bitterness toward the Lakers, lol. But that's not what this is. This about a team who paid out big money to players who flat out weren't worth it, said player got sick of it, and decided to bounce. Shard got a massive contract, and they flipped that bloated contract for Hedo and Gil and THEIR bloated contracts. They paid Gil to go away and then they overpaid for JRich, who is clearly on the decline. KG and Lebron are the absolute benchmark for situations like this, where a team languishes in mediocrity due to management, and the player finally says "You know what, FUCK YOU GUYS, I'm out." You can only do that shit for so long.

Orlando is a mess, and this particular deal sets them up as well as possible going forward. This arguably benefits them more than keeping D12 because they have no real flexibility to improve until next year at the earliest. This gives them a clean slate to start with and hard time frames to look at to plan their future.

>and yes, I know the owners lacked the balls to really
>re-imagine how they're doing business and instead just threw a
>tantrum to get some more $$$ flowing back to them. that's why
>I've increasingly soured on the league.

I don't understand this. The league was fucking fantastic this year. You'll always have some dumbass front offices, but this last season was easily the best overall in recent memory for a multitude of reasons. There was a lot of great basketball this year and truth be told, it only looks like it's getting better.