Wednesday night, the Houston Rockets and the Sacramento Kings kicked off the 2013 trade-deadline shenanigans by making a hilarious, lopsided deal. This is exactly what you'd expect from the Kings, who like nothing better than to spin assets away in exchange for nothing, except maybe letting their most promising young players dwindle into ash, but ANYWAY: the Kings sent 2012 fifth-overall pick Thomas Robinson away in exchange for Patrick Patterson, Toney Douglas, and Cole Aldrich. (The Kings also included Tyler Honeycutt and Francisco Garcia, but nobody cares about that other than Tyler Honeycutt and Francisco Garcia, and they already know they got traded.)
Let's break this down:
THE ROCKETS GET: In Thomas Robinson, a promising physical beast who has struggled so far during his rookie year but also existed in the midst of a confused, chaotic front-court led by the human Extinction-Level Event that is DeMarcus Cousins.
THE KINGS GET: Toney Douglas, who is shooting 39.5% from the field and will forever be remembered as one of the most hilarious Knicks starting point guards of all time; Patrick Patterson, a decent front-court scorer and mediocre rebounder who doesn't project as much better than the first big off the bench on a good team; and Cole Aldrich, who, whenever I envision him in my mind's eye, appears as a seven-foot-tall rooster. (I don't know why. I'm not sure what it means.)
So yeah, the Rockets won this trade. But that doesn't mean the first major player movement that Jeremy Lin's ever been party to but not the subject of didn't make him feel VERY SAD.
Aww! Jeremy! That is so sweet. But then, right after the trade:
So maybe you don't need them, right? Right.