The biggest trade of the NBA off-season involved the top two centers of the league exchanging conferences, thus potentially changing the balance of power within the league.
With the acquisition of Dwight Howard the Los Angeles Lakers have built the newest combination of stars by pairing Howard with the likes of Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol and Steve Nash.
Although the Lakers are looked at as the big winners of the deal, the Philadelphia 76ers have also improved their roster with the addition of former Lakers center Andrew Bynum.
The 76ers gave up arguably their best all-around player in Andre Igoudala sending him to the Denver Nuggets, but gained a promising player in Bynum to build around moving forward.
76ers president Rod Thorn talked about the acquisition of Bynum and how the team was able to keep the proposed deal from leaking to the media for three weeks:
"It's interesting in that we've been talking to the Lakers and to Orlando for the last three weeks. We've been talking about different deals, various deals, and it never got out. In today's world that's something of itself. And then it really came down to, Orlando - they did not want to keep Igoudala because they're going in a different way. And they wanted to move him, and so they talked to a few teams and they ended up making the deal with Denver to move his contract, and that ended up making the deal. It took a while to do it but it ended up getting done."
It seems both teams are excited and satisfied with their moves, but it has yet to be seen how things will play out this upcoming season.
Either way it should be exciting to watch as both Howard and Bynum switch coasts.
