“The Lakers Couldn’t have played it any more perfectly these past six months: never biting on Orlando’s “No, we need Gasol AND Bynum” power play, steadfastly refusing to assume Hedo Turkoglu’s lousy contract in any Bynum deal, and pretending they weren’t that interested in Howard (even though the league’s third-best player was potentially falling into their laps). Once Howard’s most likely suitor (Brooklyn) panicked about losing Deron Williams and guaranteed their non-Howard future, the Lakers responded by making their team a little more Howard-friendly with Steve Nash (one of a handful of NBA players that EVERYONE wants to play with), then hoped Howard’s extended recovery stint in Los Angeles would nudge him toward saying, “Hey, you know what? Maybe playing in a celebrity-friendly, warm-weather market with Nash and Gasol would offset having to watch Kobe launch 23 shots a game for the next two years.”

And as always with the Lakers, it worked out: They flipped the league’s second-best center (a top-20 player) into the league’s best center (and third-best player in the league) without sacrificing anything else of substance. I wrote this a few weeks ago and I’m writing it again: If scientists could create basketball-playing robots from scratch and were asked to create someone to play with Pau Gasol, Kobe Bryant and Nash, basically, they would create Dwight Howard: a ridiculously strong shot blocker/rebounder who can run the floor and doesn’t need the ball to be happy. In the span of 3.5 seconds, the Lakers went from “old, slow, can’t defend anybody” to “who’s stopping us?”

And if that’s not enough, they went from “What the hell are we going to do these next two years with an aging team and no Plan B?” to “Hey, I know what we can do — we can try to win titles while also quietly retooling around the best center of this generation!” I’m gonna say this makes them a winner. Damn it all.”