Game Time: Jedi Master Obi Wan Morey Strikes Again

At some point, other NBA general managers are going to just stop taking Daryl Morey's calls. Nobody enjoys being made a fool of, no one aspires to be the target of an atomic wedgie on the playground, and no one wants to be the Imperial Stormtrooper that gets snowed by Obi-Wan Kenobi on the way into Mos Eisley....

This is pretty much what Daryl Morey has been doing for the length of his brief tenure as general manager of the Rockets. When he's not turning second round draft picks into regular rotation contributors, he's busy convincing teams to give up their finest meats and cheeses for bags of warm garbage (with the occasional fine meat or cheese sprinkled from the Rockets because occasionally you have to give up something to get ten-times-something; plus, I don't want to disrespect to Carl Landry).

It happened again this morning. What was shaping up over the last few days to be Morey deciding which package to take -- a bunch of stuff from the Knicks or a bunch of stuff from the Bulls -- turned into a surprising (and somewhat polarizing) trade with the Kings where the main eventers were Landry and Kevin Martin, and finally evolved into a surf and turf of the Knicks' deal and the Kings' deal.

In the end, apparently it will shape out as such:

ROCKETS get Kevin Martin and Hilton Armstrong from the Kings, Jordan Hill and Jared Jeffries from the Knicks, the right to swap first round picks with the Knicks in 2011 (unless it's first overall), and the Knicks' 2012 first round pick (unless it's in the top five)

KINGS get Carl Landry and Joey Dorsey from the Rockets, and Larry Hughes from the Knicks

KNICKS get Sergio Rodriguez from the Kings, and the hours of unintentional comedy of watching Tracy McGrady try to revive his career in a Knicks uniform

Since a lot of this deal is window dressing to balance out contractual dollar amounts, clear cap space, and get under the luxury tax, allow me to boil down this trade in a functional sense, i.e. what it means on the court to the Rockets...

Daryl Morey just atomic wedgied the New York Knicks (and maybe the Kings, too; more on that in a minute). Whittling this down to guys that matter, Jedi Master Morey swapped Carl Landry for Kevin Martin, Jordan Hill, and potentially two lottery picks if the Knicks strike out on LeBron James/Dwyane Wade/Chris Bosh, a distinct possibility.

I'm convinced if the trade deadline went just a few more hours, Morey would have convinced the Knicks to throw in the Empire State Building, Spike Lee, and a conditional slice of cheesecake from the Carnegie Deli.