Every single time the Lakers look to be verging on or are in full on irrelevancy, something suddenly emerges and thrusts them right back into pole position.
You can't tell me the Rockets couldn't have beaten this offer easily. They have way better picks to offer, could damn near (if not entirely) wipe out all of the Magic's terrible contracts and give them intriguing, young, inexpensive pieces, that are at the very least comparable to what the Magic got. Plus, they were the most desperate team. They've have given up more than they wanted to get this done. Afflalo makes zero sense for the Magic, as he's vastly overpaid and is virtually useless on a re-building team. And to top it all off, they basically don't get rid of any bad contracts, because Afflalo replaces Richardson. This is even more suspect than the lottery.