For a while there, the Magic could’ve said to the Rockets or Lakers or anyone else: If we don’t like your offer for Dwight Howard, we’ll just send him to the Nets.

Now, the Magic can’t say that anymore.

Any suitor for the All-Star center had two foes to negotiate against until now: Howard’s current team and the only one he wants to call his future team. But that massive chunk of leverage disintegrated Wednesday as if Howard himself had donned his Superman cape and swooped in to smash it to smithereens.

What does it mean? Well, in the short term, it means that the Magic do not have to accept what they considered to be inferior trade proposals from the Nets and send Howard to his preferred destination just because that was the neatest, cleanest resolution to this awesome mess. But in the long run, it also could mean that the Magic are now relegated to seven more months of Howard wearing not a cape, not a hospital gown as he rehabs from back surgery, but the worst fashion faux pas of all: a Magic uniform.

via Ken Berger of CBS Sports