Former Magic shooting guard Courtney Lee is about to be traded to the third team of his short career (Bill Kostroun/Associated Press)
Two popular former Orlando Magic players are about to be involved in a four-team trade, ESPN.com’s Chad Ford is reporting.
Courtney Lee would go from the New Jersey Nets to the Houston Rockets. Trevor Ariza would go from the Rockets to the New Orleans Hornets.
The Hornets would send Darren Collison and James Posey to the Indiana Pacers. And the Pacers would send Troy Murphy to the Nets.
The Rockets would be Lee’s third team in his short NBA career, and the deal would have clear positives and one clear negative for him.
First, the positives: He’d be out of New Jersey, which went 12-70 last season and should be awful once again, even with Avery Johnson as the head coach. I also think Lee would feel energized by joining Houston; the Rockets went 42-40 last season and could sneak into this season’s Western Conference playoff chase.
Now, the negative: Lee will join a team that already has a good shooting guard. The Rockets acquired Kevin Martin from the Sacramento Kings last season, and Martin is the clear starter. Indeed, as Ford noted, perhaps the best aspect of this deal for the Rockets is that they’ll rid themselves of Ariza’s long-term contract.
How does this affect the Magic?
My friend Ben Q. Rock at OrlandoPinstripedPost.com argues the Magic’s efforts to acquire Chris Paul from New Orleans “may soon take a major hit” because the Hornets parted with Collison, a potential point guard of the future.
I disagree because that presupposes the Magic had a reasonable chance of obtaining Paul in the first place. I don’t think any team, let alone the Magic, had a chance to obtain Paul.
I’ve argued for a while that the Hornets would be crazy to trade away their franchise player while he has two more seasons left on his contract. Simply put, Paul just doesn’t have any leverage to force a deal because of his contract situation and because he’s not the type of person who would become a team cancer.
All that said, you can bet that the Paul speculation will heat up again if the Hornets start their 2010-11 badly.
Follow Josh Robbins on Twitter at @JoshuaBRobbins and e-mail him at jrobbins@orlandosentinel.com. Subscribe to our Orlando Magic newsletter at OrlandoSentinel.com/joinus.
