Talks of a Scola Amnesty, As the Dwightmare Continues

Today's free agency thread was getting a little long in the tooth and there are even more new rumors to the drama that just will not seem to die, aka The Dwightmare.

Jonathan Feigen elaborated on a few tasty little treats of the further progression in the soap opera and included a few new ones. Most notable is the part where he says that not only are the Rockets considering using their amnesty rights on Luis Scola -- a tidbit first reported by our own Tom Martin two days ago on Twitter -- to free up cap space to get a deal done for D(bag)H12, but that they are conisdering taking back some of the bad contracts that Orlando has, as expected.

What is unexpected is that it isn't the Egg McMuffin of contracts, Hedo Turkoglu. And it isn't the stupid three years and $18.6 million still remaining on Jason Richardson's contract. And, no, it isn't even the genius of the $7.5 million remaining on the contract of Chris Duhon. Nope.

Sounds like a great deal, right?

Wrong.

Feigen insinuates the deal is that Orlando is wanting Houston to take back all three in a trade to acquire a disgruntled Dwight Howard for a year. My thoughts after the jump.

I'm not too sick over the idea of Hedo and Duhon's contract, because we'd have to suffer one year with them before they become nice expiring deals. Richardson, who is 31 and has three years left is a bit more problematic. If this deal was somehow swung without having to give up lottery pick Jeremy Lamb, it would be unfortunate to bury him behind the aging two guard.

However, to think this deal can be had without giving up either Lamb or new Rockets fanboy obsession, Royce White, is a stretch. Donatas Motiejunas isn't going anywhere because he isn't even able to be traded until December. But every other player on the roster is expendable and Kevin Martin would likely be outgoing to make the money work. Orlando will need a fat, expiring contract like Martin's and a starting two guard after trading Richardson. But other than him, I wouldn't be shocked to see all our future picks and all three lottery picks from this draft belonging to the Magic soon.

I said on twitter (follow me, if you have no life ambition) that I wasn't too worried about taking on all the dead money because if Daryl Morey can trade the corpse of Tracy McGrady when he was expiring, he can move Duhon and Hedo. But he needs to be pretty damn sure he can convince Howard to stay long-term, or you've just took quite a hit in your rebuilding effort by giving up all your assets and taking on stupid contracts.

However, if Morey is convinced that he isn't going to be able to work out a new deal for Dwight, he could always insist that wherever he trades him to take back these same stupid contracts. So it could balance out, shy of losing our lottery picks from this draft.

Who knows, perhaps taking on the trio of stupid deals will enable Morey to keep Lamb or White or maybe even both. We don't really know how much he likes these guys since he never planned to keep those picks anyways. And why are we so attached to one or two of them? They haven't done anything yet.

In the end, I'm with BD34 in that I prefer the three team trade that nets us the younger Andrew Bynum, who seems like he would be open to staying in Houston for the foreseeable future. But Feigen insists that their priority is still that of acquiring Howard and ending the Dwightmare...until he actually gets here and a new one starts with the daily "will he stay or will he go" discussions.

Good times.