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There is always the possibility that acquiring Ron Artest is subtraction by addition — and this is coming from a St. John’s grad and Pacers fan who actually still generally likes the guy.

And in my opinion, Lamar Odom was the X-Factor last year. He was the guy who put up 16 pts/12 boards one night and then 3 pts/2 boards the next in the Playoffs. Sure, Ariza’s stats fluctuated, too, but he was more of a “you know what you’re gonna get” type of player and, as a finisher rather than a creator, those number spikes and lulls were more due to opportunities than him just deciding to check his aggression at the door that evening — something Lamar did very often in the regular season and for multi-game stretches in the Playoffs. And Ariza’s positive, on-court effects went deeper than numbers and creating offense because he (a) plays high-level defense and (b) rarely ever harms an offensive possession directly, aside from failing to hit a (usually open) jumper.

Ariza was considered an “X-factor” for the team. He did the little things. And didn’t get serious playing time until the end of the season.

If you remember during the regular season, playing against the Cavs, Celts, Spurs, you name it… the team hardly used Ariza, opting with Luke instead. Ariza was a NON-factor.

Now if you replace a NON-factor with a proven vet, then of course the team gets better. This is exactly what the Lakers are thinking.

Don’t get me wrong. Ariza is valuable and he should’ve been kept. But if you know you see a window of opportunity open for only a few years, you’re going to want to choose the proven product over another that “could-be”.

Turkoglu was their primary playmaker, a role Carter could never have filled. Getting some assists on drives is not the same thing as organizing and orchestrating how your team plays. And how is it that people have all of a sudden forgotten how soft and lazy VC has been for at least the past years (to the point of being made the regular butt of jokes in this regard?).

With Turk, it was constant movement with the ball, creating for others and himself. With Carter, it’s all fallaways from 20 feet out.

The Magic will win with a lot of regular season games with all that firepower, but will stumble in the playoffs. VC has not shown he can win big in the playoffs — and I don’t foresee a big change in his drive-shy, jumper-happy ways once he starts facing the toughest wing defenders on a regular basis in the playoffs. I think this will ultimately hurt the Magic.

(And another thing: why hasn’t anyone given Skip any props for being the starting PG on a Finals team? Everyone just assumes they would have automatically been better with Nelson running the show, but are we really certain? Is it 100% certain that they would’ve made it to the Finals with Jameer instead of Rafer? Nelson is a better scorer and assist-getter, but is he really a better-suited PG for the Magic? The team has so many weapons, they might need hustle, length and defense at the PG position the most — all of which Alston gave them, and Nelson cannot, being an undersized guard who cost the Magic the Fisher Game. Just a thought…)

As a Magic fan, I’ll certainly agree that the Magic team will be different from last seasons. However, I see the reason behind these moves a little bit different to how you appear to see them.

To stay the same as last year, Orlando effectively only had to re-sign Turk once he exercised his ETO. Orlando reportedly offered him 37m over 4 years (9.25m per season.)

Now, if Hedo accepts that deal, Id imagine that most of Orlando’s personell moves wouldnt have happened. The Magic (rightly or wrongly) would have the same team with a (hopefully) fully healthy Nelson back & an expiring tradeable contract in Alston. This would have been at the same time as the “arms race” in the East.

Now, Hedo says “I want 50m over 5 years” (which is 3m less overall then he got at Toronto.) What do you do? Give it to him for the sake of staying the same? Given that Orlando now have more appetite for going into the luxury tax, this would be possible and very straightforward thing to do.

However, you just know that it wouldnt take long for people to start viewing that contract as an albatross contract and a team not improving much at all in an arms race.

At this point, I dont blame Orlando’s front office saying “no thanks” to Hedo and GIVEN this situation, doing the Carter trade.

My point is, I dont think it was a concious decision to change team considerably, just that they quickly found it was the “better” route to take GIVEN the situation they were in.

One big difference is, Orlando, unlike all their major competition (CLE, BOS, LAL and SAS) were the only team this summer that had a principle core member of their squad becomming a free-agent. Its no wonder they had to change the most to keep in the “race.”

The only comparable situation is Andy V at Cleveland. Although a big contributor, he’s hardly in the same “unique” group that Hedo was. AV got the contract from his current team, Hedo didnt. AV is younger which makes it an easier call for the Cavs.

However, I wonder how that AV contract will look to the Cavs later on when its eating into league wide dwindling cap space when you know it’ll be a huge part of the “LeBron decision.”

The price to pay for this is that Orlando next season will be different. But like you said, they may even be better for it. But I dont blame for the Magic taking this course and I certainly see the sense in doing so.

The reason I compared Vince to Turk individually is that I don’t think they are really that different in terms of what they bring to the table – except that Vince is better. They’re both versatile wing scorers who can handle the ball and make plays for others. I would be wary of the ball sticking a bit with Vince but otherwise I don’t see it as a drastically altering the Magic’s philosophy. (Ariza/Artest is a more significant change in my opinion.)

“If your team was good enough to go to the Finals this year and you don’t have many injuries the following year, shouldn’t you expect your team to be even better?”

San Antonio got a lot better and Boston is a different team with KG healthy, which raises the stakes in both conferences for the coming season. Orlando in particular might have felt they were vulnerable with both Boston (adding KG and Wallace) and Cleveland (Shaq) to contend with in the East. I don’t know how necessary the Artest move was for the Lakers (especially if Bynum could have rediscovered his pre-injury form) but you could argue that Artest will help them more against most of the elite wing players (Anthony, LeBron, Pierce, Jefferson, Carter) that they are likely to encounter in the playoffs. Ariza did a good job on Turk I don’t think he has the strength or savvy to slow down guys like Melo or Pierce.