Mining the Magic depth chart: Our first questions of 2015

Well, we are less than a week until the start of practice. It is time to dive into the 2015 season and start figuring out what the team is going to look like day-in and day-out.

That part is a little tricky as we prep for training camp. With so much youth on the team, everyone foresees consistency being an issue. This team will probably look like world beaters one day and rookies the next. That is what conventional wisdom tells us at least. They could surprise us, they could disappoint us.

As we look for early storylines to this season, the best place to look is at the depth chart. For the first week or so of the season, it will all be about the internal competition and separating players with relatively similar talents. The rotation will work itself out and no one is going to be locked into any role at the beginning of the season.

Let’s take a peek at the projected depth chart (at least how I see it):

The first point of intrigue leads us to our first question:

1) Who will start at small forward?

I select Maurice Harkless for now for a couple reasons. First, he would be a low-usage complementary piece to a lineup with some guys that will want the ball in their hands. Maybe Harkless would work better with Harris in the lineup or with Payton in for Fournier.

Harkless seems to be trending toward developing into a 3-and-D guy. His 3-point shooting seemed to progress well toward the end of last season. The question is how much the 21-year-old has improved. It is clear Harkless has yet to tap into his potential.

So maybe he works well off the bench with the lineup Jacque Vaughn likely has. That could mean Tobias Harris — the ultimate tweener, if there ever were one — could slide into the starting lineup very easily and provide some much needed scoring punch (if not decent 3-point shooting).

Then, of course, there is the distinct possibility Evan Fournier will play into that small forward discussion. Even Willie Green might have something to say at least early in the season to provide some veteran stability to this young lineup.

With many of the other positions set for the foreseeable future — I think most would agree a Payton-Oladipo backcourt will be the ultimate result for the Magic — small forward is really the last one seemingly up in the air at the moment. There are a lot of directions Vaughn could go with and it could just be a “flavor of the month” or “by committee” process at least early on.

Training camp will go a long way to figuring out who gets the starting nod including answering questions of how much Harkless has improved and whether Harris can really play small forward.

2) When does Victor Oladipo slide to shooting guard?

At least early on, I would project Victor Oladipo to remain the starting point guard for the Magic. This is an experiment the Magic continue to try to perform so that Oladipo can become a well-rounded player. Eventually though, you have to turn the keys over to your rookie point guard, Elfrid Payton. When that is could be anyone’s guess. I would imagine it would happen some point in the middle of the season so that Payton can ease into the lineup.

Vaughn though has options early on and we will surely see some lineups with an Oladipo-Ridnour backcourt as well to boost Oladipo and have him play off the ball some.

Ridnour has often been miscast somewhat as a starting point guard throughout his career. He is certainly much better as a bench option to keep the ship steady. He is not going to make a ton of mistakes and manage the team when the reserves are in. Early on in the season, I would expect Ridnour to get some minutes.

How much though? That may depend on how long the Magic want the Oladipo experiment to continue.

3) Where does Andrew Nicholson get his minutes?

Much like how this is a big year for third-year player Maurice Harkless, this is also a big year for third-year player Andrew Nicholson. He too is facing an extension year and no one quite knows where he fits in with the league. His stellar rookie year was followed by a more than uneven second year.

Nicholson really has the chance to define his future career this year. Or maybe he does not really have the chance.

It is no secret looking at the depth chart above how stacked the Magic currently are at power forward. Channing Frye, Tobias Harris, Aaron Gordon and Kyle O’Quinn will probably all see time playing power forward this year. And they are all probably ahead of Nicholson on the depth chart.

Nicholson has some post skills and is an improving perimeter shooter. He still needs to improve his defense and strength around the basket. And he needs to regain the confidence the buoyed him through his rookie year.

He will have to do most of that in practice early on it seems. Nicholson has a tough rotation to crack and he might be the odd man out on the roster for now.

Seth Curry has the family name and the intrigue of fans. But can he crack the Magic’s roster? Photo by Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

4) Does Seth Curry have a chance?

Of the four invitees to training camp, it feels like Seth Curry has the best shot at making the roster. The Magic need some outside shooting desperately and that seems to be something Curry can provide.

It will be tough for him to crack the roster though. He is already behind some veteran guys and players the Magic want to feature — Evan Fournier, Victor Oladipo and then Ben Gordon and Willie Green. Maybe Gordon or Green are players the Magic are willing to sacrifice if Curry really impresses. It would be odd to sign Gordon or claim Green off waivers and then cut ties this early in the season.

It is possible though.

The Magic have been unafraid to cut ties with veteran players with guaranteed money if there is a training camp player they like. They chose DeQuan Jones over Quentin Richardson and Solomon Jones over second-round pick Romero Osby the last two seasons.

Curry though has to play his way onto the team and then play his way into playing time. There is no doubt about that. With his D-League rights owned by Santa Cruz, the Magic bringing him onto the team is a commitment to keeping him in Orlando for the entire year. Erie would not be an option.

5) With all the versatility, how big will the rotation be?

Jacque Vaughn has a lot of room to experiment with lineups. Those positions in the depth chart above are very loosely defined except for a few players (namely, Elfrid Payton and Nikola Vucevic). Everyone else seems capable of playing multiple positions on the floor.

That makes it pretty hard to figure what Jacque Vaughn’s rotations are going to be or even how the team is going to play at all.

The one truth though is you cannot play everybody. And more versatility actually means you need less players because they can be so interchangeable and be used in different lineups.

This will be one of Vaughn’s bigger challenges this season is managing all the different combinations at his disposal. He will have to start doing that throughout the preseason, even with some of the experimentation sure to happen throughout October.