NBA Trade Rumors: Lakers Are Magic's Only Option to Deal Dwight Howard

By the March 15th trade deadline, the Orlando Magic’s ability to compete over the next half-dozen years will be set in stone.

Dwight Howard is gone. 

Yeah, I know, he’s still on the roster, but no one in their right mind would bet on the odds that he sticks around. 

If Otis Smith is determined to keep Dwight in Orlando, he better find some condemning blackmail material because that'd be the only thing to keep Superman from flying off to a team that he believes can actually win a title. 

The Magic’s only hope of staying relevant is to trade Howard not to just anyone, but the Los Angeles Lakers.

Orlando must pull off a Denver Nuggets-like trade—minus the letting-their-free-agents-run-off-to-China part—and get whatever they can for Howard.

First off, yes, there are teams that can offer more than the Lakers that would be better fits for D12; the Chicago Bulls and Miami Heat for example. 

The Bulls aren’t going to break up that strong core, though, and Pat Riley’s ego is too massive to deal LeBron.  But compared to teams like the New Jersey Nets and Dallas Mavericks, LA boasts a huge advantage.

If Los Angeles gets off to a bad start—a likely scenario considering that they’ve taken a step backwards this offseason—Mitch Mupchak will become more open to trading Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol.  The Nets can’t compete with that.

Brook Lopez?  Really?  You can’t build a franchise around a seven-footer who averages 6.9 boards a game.

Even with Bynum’s fragile knees, at least he has shown dominance when fully healthy.

According to ESPN’s Mark Stein, the Portland Trailblazers could attempt to turn a deal for Dwight into a three-way trade and send Gerald Wallace to the Magic. 

Even then, Wallace is a 29-year-old role player—a stud, lockdown defender, but still a role player. 

At least with Pau Gasol—who T.J. Simers of the LA Times reported that there’s still a chance that the Lakers could trade—Orlando would be getting a potential 20-10 guy who, along with Bynum, could carry a team into the playoffs.

And with the Mavericks, the idea that they could even send an offer that wouldn’t cause Otis Smith to break down with tears of laughter is a joke in itself. 

Sure, they’re the defending champions, but Mark Cuban’s club is full of veterans who have absolutely no trade value outside the untouchable Dirk Nowitzki. 

Roddy Beaubois and Dominique Jones aren’t going to cut it; the only possible way D12 ends up in a Dallas-uni is through free agency.

Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski reported that the Magic prefer a trade with the Lakers over their other options and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand why. 

With a deal for Bynum and Gasol, the Magic don’t miss a beat, but take any other offer and Orlando suffers an unrecoverable drop-off.

David Daniels is a featured columnist at Bleacher Report and a syndicated writer. Follow him on Twitter.