Al Harrington was re-signed by the Atlanta Hawks and traded to the Indiana Pacers for a first round draft pick. This trade caps off a relatively ho-hum offseason, where Jermaine O’Neal, Kevin Garnett, Carlos Boozer, and Allen Iverson were supposed to be changing zipcodes, but didn’t.

In the big scheme of things, is this trade going to impact the Atlanta Hawks or the Indiana Pacers?

Atlanta Hawks

Atlanta has so many small forwards, they aren’t even going to miss Harrington. Well, they may miss him a little, but they will enjoy missing the large contract that they would have been paying him even more. They have some good young talent at small forward, and apparently he was only worth about a first round pick to them.

Indiana Pacers

The Indiana Pacers lost Peja Stojakovic at the beginning of free agency, and picked up Harrington near the end to take his place. There may be a bit more chemistry between Harrington and O’Neal than there was between Stojakovic and O’Neal, but this move pretty much leaves Indiana in the same position they were last year. Since Al plays closer to the basket than Peja, it may even be tougher to keep the double- and triple-teams away from Jermaine O’Neal.

They will be a mediocre team, perhaps even the worst team, in a really tough division.

The Bulls will be better than last year. Another year of experience for their young players and the addition of Ben Wallace will push them towards the top of their division.

The Detroit Pistons will not be as good (having lost Big Ben), but they will still be much better than the Pacers.

The Cleveland Cavaliers behind Lebron James will still be better than Indiana. They didn’t make many offseason changes, but they were better than the Pacers last year and Indiana hasn’t done enough to pass them up in the standings.

Heck, I can’t even say that Indiana will be better than the Milwaukee Bucks, who made a couple of decent moves themselves.

I really find it funny that the Pacers organization talk about how this will make them fun to watch again. Not the way I see it, it won’t.

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