Acquiring veterans in any deal for Dwight Howard won’t help Magic

Orlando discussed a possible Dwight Howard trade with Atlanta that would've involved Joe Johnson and other veteran players with big contracts. (AP)

Marc Stein of ESPN.com has filed the latest on the Dwight Howard trade talks, focusing on the sort of package the Magic want:

Sources familiar with Orlando’s thinking say that a picture of what the Magic will ultimately expect in return for their anchor has indeed begun to emerge, telling ESPN.com this week that Orlando would not hold out for youth and draft picks as the league-owned New Orleans Hornets were ordered to do in the Chris Paul sweepstakes. The Magic, sources say, would instead prefer to bring back multiple established veterans who can keep the team competitive.

The Magic have a shiny new arena to fill, and their owner, 85-year-old Rich DeVos, has no taste for a rebuild.

And then this:

Sources told ESPN.com that the aforementioned Hawks, meanwhile, engaged Orlando in trade talks for Howard earlier this month with an offer believed to be headlined by $124 million guard Joe Johnson and swingman Josh Smith. You have to figure that the Magic, though, would insist on Al Horford if such discussions ever got serious.

Atlanta believed it was making “progress” in the talks before Magic GM Otis Smith temporarily ended all Howard trade discussions, Stein reports.

As you’ll recall, Stein and others reported a couple of weeks ago that the Nets, Blazers and Magic were working on a three-team deal that would have sent Howard to New Jersey and yielded Gerald Wallace, Brook Lopez and at least one first-rounder for the Magic, with the Blazers receiving multiple picks for their assistance. (The Nets were reportedly willing to send out as many as five first-rounders combined to Portland and Orlando.) The Magic would have dumped both Hedo Turkoglu and Chris Duhon on New Jersey, a contract-shedding bonanza that would have required the Nets to send at least one other asset — probably Jordan Farmar — out in the deal.

Trading a true top-five-level superstar is a losing proposition either way, especially in the Eastern Conference, where everything over the next three or four seasons goes through juggernauts in Miami and Chicago. The Magic aren’t in the same league as those two right now. They aren’t in the same league as those two if they go for a Hornet-style package of youth and picks that takes them to the lottery. They aren’t in the same league as those two if they end up with a collection of veterans from Houston (the vetoed Chris Paul bounty of Luis Scola, Kevin Martin and flotsam) or the younger collection of veterans from Atlanta. If you’re getting nowhere near a ring over the next half-decade, you could argue the best course, in realistic financial terms, is to keep attendance up by providing a decent team that will generate at least two home games’ worth of playoff ticket revenue.

But there are problems with that:

• You’re not winning  a title with Glen Davis, Jason Richardson, Jameer Nelson, Ryan Anderson and any of the veteran packages suggested here. The only possible exception is a deal that brings back both Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum from the Lakers — a deal the Lakers still insist they will not make. But a Johnson/Smith package for Atlanta? The Rockets platter? You’re not getting by Chicago and Miami with that.

• Dealing Howard and missing the lottery removes perhaps Orlando’s best chance to land a top-three pick in the draft. There isn’t another unprotected Minnesota first-rounder floating around the league now, and any team that nabs Howard early enough is going to play its way into the postseason. Perhaps this is one reason Orlando is holding off on seriously dealing with New Jersey.

• You have to pay these veteran players, which complicates the alleged financial benefits of fielding a so-so playoff team and limits your ability to truly rebuild. Martin and Scola will make $21.8 million next season, and Scola alone has more guaranteed money in 2013 than Turkoglu and Duhon combined, per ShamSports.  Johnson and Smith make nearly $33 million combined next season, and Johnson by himself will earn $25 million – in 2015-16. Al Horford is a more desirable long-term chip than Smith, but combine Horford’s $12 million salary with Johnson’s megadeal, and you’ve got at least half of any reasonable projected salary cap tied up in two players for the next half-decade. One of those players is 30 and coming off the worst season of his prime.

Side note: You can see the appeal in this for the Hawks. The worst-case scenario involves losing Horford instead of Smith, tossing away a first-round pick, and having Howard walk into free agency after half a season. And even in that scenario, the Hawks would position themselves to rebuild instantly; Johnson’s contract would be gone, and they could flip Smith, whose deal expires after next season, for a first-round pick at some point. The Hawks are in the same boat as every other non-Heat/Bulls team. Why not start preparing now for a future in which they might be realistic contenders to win the Eastern Conference?

Perhaps the Magic could find a middle-ground by acquiring veterans to keep the team in the playoffs and then flipping those veterans later for younger assets/draft picks. Part of the appeal there is that there just isn’t an extra draft pick floating around with the immediate value the Minnesota first-rounder the Clippers could peddle along with Eric Gordon — himself a better prospect than Lopez, the only proven young-ish player (other than Bynum) mentioned so far in most Magic trade talk. Charlotte and Golden State owe one very appealing first-rounder each (to Chicago and Utah, respectively), but even those have at least top-five protection for several more years.

Without a can’t-miss lottery pick coming in, why not hold the fort by acquiring veterans or going the New Jersey/Portland route with a mixed package?

The downside is obvious: It offers no clear path to a championship-level roster. Anything is possible with luck and wise cap management, but adding veterans now in hopes of flipping them later adds lots of variables to mix. Going for a Hornet-style package, to the degree it’s possible, skips the middleman and gives you at least a chance at acquiring a franchise-level star in the draft or via cap space.

The irony, of course, is that the Magic have a franchise-level star, and they would have a shot at cap space this summer had they not acquired so many bad contracts over the last two years. Heck, they could still have amnestied and cut their way to a decent chunk of cap space this summer had they not dumped nearly $13 million annually on Davis and Richardson this month in an attempt to please Howard. Then again, getting max-level cap space this July was going to be very difficult before signing those guys, in part because the Magic had already added long-term money in the deal that landed Turkoglu.

Bottom line: The Magic are in a bad spot, and acquiring stop-gap veterans in any Howard deal won’t change anything.