Like most houses, ours is not welcoming to flies. We have screens in every window. We holler at the kids if they leave a door hanging open. We don't have a doggie door, an attic exhaust fan or the like. We keep the food flies like in the fridge, and the garbage can has a lid.

And yet ... flies happen. They just do. Serve a big plate of grilled salmon, say, and sure enough those little jerks emerge from ... wherever they hang out ... to join the party entirely uninvited.

It's just the way it is.

Now, one way I guess you could react is to get all angry and say THAT FLY IS A CONDEMNATION OF THE ENTIRE SCREEN SYSTEM. Why bother closing the door, using tupperware and all that hassle? It doesn't work.

But that's a crock, of course. Flies show up on your food because that's nature. They were born to do that. "The system" of screens and doors does what it can, but it doesn't do everything. So, you can look at that fly or two and be thankful there aren't two dozen, as there might be if you were outside.

Nobody screwed up. It's simply that flies have magnetism to food, and magnetism is powerful.

It's the same in business. The most qualified law students are drawn to the best law firms. The best business school graduates tend to gravitate to a handful of dominant Wall Street firms.

And -- did you see how happy they were on Team USA? -- the best basketball players tend to end up on the best teams. The most talented in all fields gravitate to the best firms. That's commonplace, natural and not at all unique to basketball.

I'm not saying I like that. But to say that it happens in the NBA because of the system is straight loco. It's because of nature. Like the screens in your house's windows, the system tries to stop that, with a growing set of taxes, revenue sharing, salary caps, a weighted lottery and the like. The system is designed to even out that playing field somewhat. It tries.

If you must blame the system ...

Everybody knows the Magic could have gotten far better players than Arron Afflalo, picks and the like for Howard. But Howard is a Laker because the Magic liked the Lakers' offer better than the Nets' offer, the Rockets' offer or anybody else's.

Those upset that Howard is a Laker howl at how bad this system is for small-market teams like the Magic -- and ignore the reality that the only reason this happened was because the Magic chose this offer. This was their decision alone. They perpetrated this deal; they cannot also be victims of it.

The Magic chose this miserable package.

I have to believe they liked that offer best because it will most allow them to follow the model of GM Rob Hennigan's former employer, the Thunder. OKC was terrible for years, by strategy -- in order to collect talent high in the draft.

This is what another former Thunder front office employee, Rich Cho, has been doing with the Bobcats -- and he set a record for losing. The Magic will be right there with the Bobcats for a few years.

The Magic took a bad deal because that's what they were looking for. That's something the NBA should change. The best players in the world almost all go high in the lottery, to a collection of the teams that lose the most. If the best players found employment almost any other way, there'd be no reason for the Magic to have made the crucial decision to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

But for the lure of high picks born of terrible play, the Magic would have demanded great heaps of talented players for Howard, and the league wouldn't feel so lopsided.