1. Dwight Howard acquired by Brooklyn Nets
Dwight Howard was a Brooklyn Net. It’s true. It’s on his page at basketball-reference.com and everything!
Howard came to Brooklyn in a blockbuster deal that involved reuniting Timofey Mozgov’s contract with former Los Angeles Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak, now GM of the Charlotte Hornets.
Because whenever you can saddle a GM with one of the bad deals that got him fired from his old job now that he found a new job, you just have to do it.
Reaction from fans on social media to the acquisition of Howard, an eight-time All-Star and three-time Defensive Player of the Year, was enthusiastic.
OK, so maybe “enthusiastic” was a reach.
But there was genuine excitement at shedding the contract of Mozgov, signed when the NBA salary cap spiked in 2016 and general managers spent money like lumberjacks getting out of the woods for the first time in six months.
The prospect of having cap space for not just one, but two, max contracts in the summer of 2019 was legitimately exciting for Brooklyn fans still in therapy for their PTSD over Billy King trading away the future of the franchise for 44 wins and a second-round playoff exit in 2013.
And if the price of that was acquiring Howard, who by all reports is only slightly less-liked by teammates than Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan and that guy in front of me at the movie theater WHO WON’T PUT HIS (*%&_@ CELL PHONE DOWN … ahem, sorry, so be it.
As it turns out, that part wouldn’t be an issue.